Sir Donald Bradman is the Greatest Batsman?
Steve Waugh said today that Sachin Tendulkar is a great batsman but Don Bradman is the greatest. I am a fan of cricket and of baseball. Both these games are related (Baseball is an offshoot of Cricket) and use similar terminologies. Both are summer games and in both cases tradition plays an important factor. In addition Cricket and Baseball are about numbers and statistics.
For the most part American baseball fans consider Babe Ruth as the greatest player to every play the game. Between 1914 and 1935 Babe Ruth played for the famous New York Yankees and the Boston Rex Sox. As a batsman for the New York Yankees the “Babe” as he is known as put up numbers that was clearly in a league of its own. These numbers still stand up when compared to the power numbers put up by players of our generation.
The Donald Bradman story is very similar. He played test cricket for Australia for almost twenty years. His batting average and the rate at which he scored centuries will never be broken. His battles against the English team during the Ashes series are the stuff of legends. Don Bradman was not just a cricket player. Just like Babe Ruth in the United States, Don Bradman is also considered a cultural icon.
I am not in favor of anointing any player in any sport as the greatest ever. They may be the greatest player of their generation but not the greatest player of all time. It is also interesting to note that the “greatest” players in most sports are players that played the game long before globalization, long before there was 24/7 media glare and long before average fans had the ability to analyze and criticize and express their opinions on the web or other forms of media. We have to accept them as the greatest because that’s the way it is.
In sports there are very few great players today. This is not because of lack of skill set or talent or records. Even when everything on the field is perfect we can always find something beneath the surface that we can use to take them down. I am confident that players like Bradman and Babe Ruth will not have the aura that they have if they were playing today. Remember a golfer by the name of Tiger Woods?
When comparing players of different generations we should also consider social and other critical facts that have changed since the playing days of Babe Ruth and Don Bradman. Bradman played 52 test matches. 37 of these 52 matches were against England. The remaining 15 were against India, South Africa and West Indies all of whom were English colonies at the time (the Indian, West Indian and South African citizens had very little input when it came to team selection). Would any modern day cricket fan consider this to be fair competition?
Similarly Babe Ruth played his entire career playing baseball in a segregated society (there was a separate league for non-white players). Today baseball is completely dominated by players from the Caribbean, Central and South America. Would Babe Ruth’s numbers be the same if he played in an integrated league? Probably not.
So let us not get carried away and crown somebody who played the game 100 years back as the greatest. It would be an insult to the advances that human beings make every day and every year in terms of physical fitness and athletic and mental ability and the level of competition.
Related posts:
- Are These Empty Praises?
- India Playing Cricket in Empty Stadiums
- The Dilemma Facing Sachin Tendulkar
- What is Wrong With Indian Cricket?
- All Those Meaningless Runs Scored By Tendulkar & Company
Category: Sports & Entertainment