It's official...

T > B

And I = B

Little Master, big myths

December 23, 2011


"This fellow is playing much the same as I used to play" ... Don Bradman in 1996. Photo: Bryan Charlton
A former English cricketer's analysis of the duo's batting styles has revealed chalk-and-cheese differences, writes Chris Barrett.

DONALD Bradman once told Ray Martin that he saw himself in Sachin Tendulkar, but 15 years after that famous interview, the theory that the Indian is a modern-day version of the greatest batsman of all has been debunked.

As Tendulkar, now 38, embarks on his final Test tour of Australia, comparisons with Bradman are inevitable. However, Tony Shillinglaw, a former English cricketer and coach who has conducted an extensive biomechanical study of Bradman's technique, argues that there are very few similarities to be made with the Little Master in terms of style.

''It's almost become a myth that if you're watching Tendulkar, you're watching Bradman. Well, there is very little comparison when you do so,'' Shillinglaw says. ''Tendulkar is basically textbook, whereas Bradman used a rotary method in preparing to hit the ball.

Advertisement: Story continues below ''What you get with that is it becomes just a human instinct to react to the ball, and in the end that's the basis of Bradman's method. It's a circular motion. He didn't learn to bat, he learned to control the ball.''

Bradman's tale about watching Tendulkar on television, told to Martin in 1996, became the stuff of legend. Five years before his death he told Martin that he noticed similarities between the way the then 23-year-old Indian played and himself after seeing him bat in one-day internationals.

''I was very, very struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him,'' Bradman said. ''Now I never saw myself play, but I feel that this fellow is playing much the same as I used to play, and she looked at him on the television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two.

''To me it's his compactness, his technique, his stroke production; it all seemed to gel as far as I was concerned … that was how I felt.''

Shillinglaw, who analysed Bradman at length and had scientists at Liverpool's John Moores University recreate his strokes, accepts there are some facets of Bradman's batting that resonate in Tendulkar. But, technically, he says, they are chalk and cheese.

''It does make sense to a degree. They were both small men, and Tendulkar wasn't taught to bat in a traditional way,'' Shillinglaw says. ''Of course, being small and compact, he developed in his own way the skill of judging the ball and reacting to the ball.

''The similarity is that they were both expert at viewing the ball and playing it, but Tendulkar, I feel he is restricted by the confines of orthodoxy. It amazes me that with all modern technology nobody has really looked in-depth at [Bradman's] method and compared it with the likes of Tendulkar in particular because of his reputation, and Jacques Kallis, whose average is very similar. They're both very highly skilled, technical players, and comparing Bradman with those two, I feel, is a way to establishing Bradman's differences.''

So, if Tendulkar is not made in the mould of Bradman, and is in fact significantly different, then who has come closest to replicating the Don?

''Funnily enough, the nearest I've seen of all people is Inzamam-ul-Haq, even though he was a big bull of a man,'' says Shillinglaw, who penned the book Bradman Revisited. ''His batting movements were the nearest I've seen to Bradman, and amazingly his timing and his foot movement for a big man - they were very quick.''

Three days before the Boxing Day Test - where Tendulkar will continue his quest for a hundredth international hundred as a four-Test series with Australia gets under way - there were more comparisons with Bradman yesterday.

A researcher at Queensland's Griffith University claims Tendulkar is now the greatest batsman of all time, slightly eclipsing Bradman on a ranking system he devised applying economic principles to batting scores.

''They're very close, and they're a long way ahead of the pack,'' Dr Nicholas Rohde says. ''The way the rankings work is that you look at how many runs a player has scored in their total career, and then you look at how many runs an average player of that era would have scored if they played the same amount of innings. Bradman has outscored his contemporaries over a 52-Test career by about 4000 runs. Tendulkar has outscored the average batsman of his era by 4100 or so.''

Rohde places Kallis third on the all-time list, with Brian Lara and Garfield Sobers making up the top five.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/little-master-big-myths-20111222-1p714.html#ixzz1hKWjOlHw

It is official academics and researchers have too much time on their hands.

What does it say about Institutions that fund and approve this waste of time.

It is a logical fallacy to suppose that because Tendulkar is slightly better than the average player now than Bradman was to the average player then Tendulkar is a greater player than Bradman. All it means that the current standard of Test batting is lower than in Bradman's era making SRT more prominent.

He's scored 4100 more runs than the average player now in how many Tests?

Bradman scored 4000 more runs than the average player then in how many Tests?

Wickets were covered when?

etc etc

it must be a season for monkeys and typewriters

Why let facts get in the way of a story?

tricycle wrote:Why let facts get in the way of a story? rant

fixed in line with FB tradition

Paul Keating wrote:It is official academics and researchers have too much time on their hands.

What does it say about Institutions that fund and approve this waste of time.

Sage, Ponts. I read the article (well, the first few paragraphs) and thought exactly that. It's 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

However I can imagine half a million Bannies are now whacking off to the article.

SGDT in imagining Bannies whacking off shock

lardbucket wrote:

tricycle wrote:Why let facts get in the way of a story? rant

fixed in line with FB tradition

I was writing about your post the article. It's the main sports article in the papers here and it's sh!te to wake up to that sh!te.

Kalis third on the all-time list? Like hell he is.

tricycle wrote:

lardbucket wrote:

tricycle wrote:Why let facts get in the way of a story? rant

fixed in line with FB tradition

I was writing about your post the article.

yes, I know

They got what they wanted and the Times of India can have a tit w@nk about Griffith university now.

Basil wrote:Kalis third on the all-time list? Like hell he is.

So it's

Bradman
Lara
Kallis

Makes sense

tricycle wrote:They got what they wanted and the Times of India can have a tit w@nk about Griffith university now.

'tit wank' ... you say that like it's a bad thing

It's great if it's a boob wank but the Times is a moob wank.

A researcher at Queensland's Griffith University claims Tendulkar is now the greatest batsman of all time, slightly eclipsing Bradman on a ranking system he devised applying economic principles to batting scores.

So Karti did move to Brisbane...

Fair dinkum, what a load of crap that theory is.

It's 'basically right' though

It annoyed me that an academic was talking about the amount of innings.

Anyway absolutely no attempt seemed to be made to factor in the type of pitches i.e. sub-continent vs. other parts of the world, where players predominantly played their cricket, among other things.

Yes it's official...

Javed Hashmi has joined the PTI...