Test records that will never be broken

At least twice as many opponents as I thought, then!

Pretty mediocre against WI. Imagine if he’d faced Holding, Roberts, Marshall, Garner, Ambrose and Walsh…

Bradman finally got to the last man on the bench, the dreaded pacer Patrick Patterson. Apparently, Patterson remained seated when the great man came to have a word with him. He looked up at the 80-year-old and after a protracted, Patterson stood up, towering over the short-statured Bradman, and said: “You Don Bradman? You Don Bradman? I kill you, maan! I bowl at you, I kill you! I split you in two!”

As people around heard in stunned silence the words coming out of Patterson’s mouth, Bradman looked Patterson in the eye and cooly replied: “You couldn’t even get Merv Hughes out. You’d have no chance against me, mate!”

Looks to me the Aussies are fanatic over their little fairytales nobody else cares about.

Ashitya's record for 'most irritating presence on the SBM' and 'greatest ratio decibels/ IQ' are surely set in conctete - coincidentally tje same substance that his brain is composed of

Seeing as Bradman was 80 years old at the time and had played virtually no serious cricket for 40 years, the Balfourmeister may have occasionally made him hurry his shot - provided the pitch was a cow-paddock like the last day at the MCG that summer.

Re Don v the other Windies bowlers of the era: I think you'd have to start at whatever Gooch or Boon or Border could be relied on to score against them, and work your way up. Remember, he averaged better than rhe career average of all but two (or one?) of the others who played in the Bodyline series, and those blokes also could seriously bowl....

Fred Nerk wrote:Ashitya's record for 'most irritating presence on the SBM' and 'greatest ratio decibels/ IQ' are surely set in conctete - coincidentally tje same substance that his brain is composed of

Let him keep going. Cheese will ban him for trolling.

I did once have a look at a list of other great Test batsmen and picked out their best 52 Tests (non-sequential). I think there was maybe one player you could generate an average over 90 for, using that method. In terms of sequences of 52 consecutive Tests, I don’t think anyone else ever managed to average 70. I’ll have to dig that out if I can.

A cycling fan on another sports forum claimed Merckx was further ahead of anyone else in his sport’s history than Bradman was in cricket. Doping questions aside, sacrilege or a genuine case?

Merckx didn't always win, though, great as he was (asterisk or not).

Heather Mackay's name gets trotted out as another who was head and shoulders above all contemporaries. Ditto Michael Phelps.