Here we go again! Commentators of the sport comparing another batsman, in the same breath, to the feats of the legendary Donald Bradman. Currently it is the Australian captain, Steve Smith.
In the early 2000s it was Matthew Hayden who was the ‘new’ Bradman and, somewhat later, Michael ‘Mr Cricket’ Hussey when his average in Tests had risen to a lofty eighty-seven, yet still short of Bradman’s 99.94.
Hayden’s average upon his retirement was approximately fifty-four and Hussey’s fifty-three. I can’t be anymore precise than that because, in the last two decades, I have virtually lost nearly all of my interest in the game that has changed so much within the last twenty years. When I do watch it, it is because Tiki has a genuine interest in it.
Changed sufficiently, to mean that batsmen’s statistics that have been accumulated in this century should never be compared to those of Bradman’s era or even the 1980s and 1990s. Nor should the centuries scored because of the official changes that have been inflicted upon the game. A century scored today doesn’t even equate to one scored twenty or thirty years ago, never mind in Bradman’s time as a player. The commentators and statisticians would believe such centuries do, however, purists of the game know otherwise.
The reasons for me stating this are varied. Some that readily come to mind, but not in any order of particular significance, are:
1. The fact that in the early decades of Tests, the matches were of a timeless duration. Teams would play until a result was achieved.
2. There are now three forms of the game: five-day Tests, one-day (50-overs per side) matches and the considerably more frenzied T20 (20-over) matches. Whilst I recognise that ‘one-dayers’ have existed since the early 1970s, they weren’t played in such profusion. It is my belief that today’s batsmen who play regularly in one or both non-traditional shortened versions of the sport become ‘schooled’ in the handling of the different situations that arise during Test matches.
3. Bradman played thirty-seven of his fifty-two Tests against the paramount opposition of the time, namely England. He did not get to play on the postage-stamp grounds of the West Indies nor was he afforded the opportunity to play against what have been referred to in some quarters as ‘minnows’. At the close of 2017, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa defeated one such ‘minnow’, Zimbabwe, in less than two days.
4. Prior to the relatively recent advent of professionalism, players, such as Bradman, had to work at jobs to support themselves and any members of their respective families. When the Australians would tour England to contest the Ashes, teams would have to spend six weeks aboard a ship in order to reach that destination.
5. Not only was Bradman a part-time cricketer he had to forgo playing the sport at an international level from 1939-’45, due to the outbreak and continuance of war.
6. While I stated that my grievances against cricket as it is today are not in order of their significance, should I be doing thus the introduction of the usage of ropes as boundaries would definitely be at the top of this list.
What a ridiculous and needless adjunct to the game this has proven to be!
I particularly recall tests held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when the boundary rope was perhaps thirty to forty metres in from the actual fence. From memory, Matthew Hayden was very much the beneficiary of this when he amassed what became a record score on Australian soil. As if such a boundary didn’t distort his score sufficiently, his record innings was made against none other country than Zimbabwe, a nation whose sides would struggle to defeat a grade side in Sydney.
When ropes were introduced to international cricket in Australia, I remember it was stated to be deemed necessary because a few players had slid into the fence feet-first and injured themselves. However, since the introduction of the rope it appears to me that the number of injuries has increased quite noticeably. I attribute this to the fact that a fieldsman has less time in which to stop the ball, therefore, more often than not this results in him diving headlong at the rope, whilst he is still moving at at full speed.
I remain unconvinced that injuries brought about the drastic change to boundaries. Instead, it is my belief that the real reasons were twofold. Firstly, Bradman’s average for batsmen who have played a minimum of fifty Tests had stood, and still does, head and shoulders above the others and after more than half a century plans were afoot to hopefully make this to be no longer the case. After all, the mantra in sport is that records are made to be broken! Secondly, once rope boundaries were just that, ropes, now they are a means of advertising sponsors’ products. There are even hoardings erected which display advertisements between the actual former boundary — the fence — and the ‘rope’. This not only benefits the advertisers, it gives the illusion that the ‘rope’ is closer to the actual “real” boundary, i.e. the fence, than it is.
Previously, to score a six the ball had to clear the fence which was a metre or more in height. Now the ball only has to clear the ‘rope’ that is placed on the ground, as previously stated, usually at a distance that ranges from between five and twelve metres inside the field’s actual perimeter. The difference between the scoring of a “real” six and the modern variety could require a differentiation in the actual distance required of up to fifteen to twenty metres, dependent upon a ball’s trajectory.
7. Nowadays, the meticulously mowed fields are more akin to a green on which to play bowls than cricket. Balls move across their surface as if it were glass.
8. Pitches weren’t always covered as they are now. Who can remember that last day at Perth’s W.A.C.A. in December, 2017 when the result of the Test hung in the balance and several men with blower-vac’s were attempting to dry it to England’s satisfaction, as time ebbed away and Australia was the only team with a hope of victory.
9. Don’t get me started on the difference in bats, to those used in the time of Bradman. They are as thick, as half of the width of the one’s that were at his disposal!
The situation became so farcical that even some former players of quality called for a reversion to make them appear more like the bats of even twenty years ago.
Added to this, of course, there were no such things as computers to assist in determining the ultimate so-called ‘sweet-spot’ in the construction of a bat.
In summary, there may never be a true equivalent to Bradman, that masterly batsman who once scored more than three hundred runs in a day’s play against England, in England, in the early 1930s. The man who still managed to score a century in the infamous series of ‘Bodyline’, when the bowlers in the English side deliberately aimed at the bodies of the Australians, while their captain, Douglas Jardine, employed a packed on-side field. Interestingly, they possessed none of the armoury that batsmen are equipped with today.
Is it any wonder that past outstanding performers of the game, such as Sachin Tendulkar, and those aspiring to be champions of the game, come to pay homage to the great man at the museum established in his honour in Bowral, New South Wales?