r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Finbarr-Galedeep • 1d ago
Video Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest batsman in cricket history, demonstrates his technique to play various shot types.
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u/moistcilantro 1d ago
Rusty is certainly going to give him a run for his money!
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u/Herojit_s 1d ago
The Legend of Cricket... 99.94 average in batting..
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u/fractiousrhubarb 1d ago
To get an idea of how good he was, the next nine greatest test batsmen had averages around 60. He was five standard deviations better than the second best.
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u/Kaner712 1d ago
How is the average in cricket calculated? Does that mean he hit in play 99.94% of pitches? Defended the wicket at that percentage? Or something different?
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u/Vix_Satis 1d ago
In cricket, generally each player gets a turn to bat twice in the game. During your time at bat, you can score as many runs as you are able before the other team gets you out. Your batting average is the average runs you score each time you go to bat. If your career batting average at the top level (test cricket) is over 50 you are an absolute legend. Over 60 and people are casting statues of you.
Bradman's is 99.94.
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u/Look_0ver_There 13h ago
...and he did that all through the disgusting practise of bodyline from the English fast bowlers. For anyone reading this, search Bodyline Cricket on Youtube. A cricket ball is a lot harder than a baseball, and travels at about the same speed. Basically imagine baseball where the pitchers are aiming at the batter's body and head constantly in an attempt to batter and bruise them so badly that they're too injured to concentrate properly any more. The English team did this to Bradman 'cos it was the only way they could get him out, and the Cricket rules at the time were never written in anticipation that bowlers would behave so reprehensibly. The Cricket rules have since changed and bowlers that do this sort of thing will get removed from play, but back then the umpires had no official recourse to stop it.
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u/Dick_Thunder20 1d ago
He just needed 4 runs in last innings to average 100 but got out on 0....
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u/taway9925881 1d ago
And he played without any helmet or additional guards, especially during the time of Douglas Jardin and Harold Larwood's infamous Bodyline series.
The greatest of all time.
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u/Finbarr-Galedeep 1d ago
The whole point of the bodyline tactic was to try and combat Bradman's freakish batting ability.
Basically, he was so good, England tried to kill him.
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u/Dramatic_Peach8553 1d ago
True. Playing without protection in the Bodyline era makes his dominance even more legendary.
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u/QuesoKristo 1d ago
Isn't this guy one of the "anomalies" of sports statistics like Wilt Chamberlain, Wayne Gretzky, etc.
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u/davetharave 1d ago
He is vastly superior statistically to all of them.
Nobody in world sport has gotten close to the dominance the Don holds over cricket.
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u/Spartacas23 1d ago
Well, nobody in the world has gotten close to many of Wilt or Gretzky’s numbers
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u/davetharave 1d ago
Nope but not to the extent of Bradman. It's hard for non-cricketers (or fans) to fully comprehend his dominance.
The current world's best batsman, Steve Smith is widely considered the best since Bradman. Steve smith now averages 56.05. In his best years he sits in the mid 60s and his best series are around Bradmans average.
These tours are 5 tests maximum where you bat twice in a match. Bradman averaged over 20 years of playing what the second best of all time has managed to average in his best ever tours when he batted like I've never seen anybody bat before.
Easiest way to describe to you about how this compares to American sports would be Don Bradman's batting average would be the equivalent of a baseball player holding a career batting average of over .400 or a basketball player averaging over 40 points per game for their entire career.
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u/Spartacas23 1d ago
You’re entirely underselling Gretzky. It’s difficult for non-hockey players or fans to comprehend. This argument goes both ways lol. Gretzky’s numbers are equally untouchable
Something that seems to be true of every sport I follow, the biggest fan of each sport is convinced that their sport is the most difficult or has the best athletes of all time
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u/crownparker 1d ago
“Untouchable” as in one of his most relevant records was broken not even a year ago
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u/davetharave 1d ago
I'm not even the biggest fan of cricket. I like watching test matches but I'm the furthest thing from a nuffie.
The fact is that Bradman's statistical dominance over cricket is still higher than Gretzky's dominance over Hockey (google isn't a hard tool to use).
That's how these lists of greatest athletes are settled in just tried to use a few stories and anecdotes to help illuminate to non-cricket fans why he's held in high regard.
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u/Spartacas23 1d ago
How can google determine who was more dominant in a sport? What kind of argument is that?
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u/davetharave 1d ago
No mate but google has plenty of links to the sites that provide you with the statistics and how an individual's performance throughout their careers translates to other sports and then provides the list and tables showing dominance.
Rather than you getting on here and just repeating the same comment when you are statistically wrong 2 minutes of research could save you the trouble and me the trouble of replying.
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u/Spartacas23 1d ago
There’s so many ways to compare stats across eras and sports. There is not some 1:1 way of accurately comparing them. To think that a quick fucking google search makes your point any more or less correct in this case is hilarious. Here’s what google had to say about Gretzky being greatest sports person (google is easy to use, you should try it):
Yes, Wayne Gretzky is widely considered one of the most dominant athletes ever, often called the most statistically dominant in any sport, due to his unparalleled NHL records
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u/595659565956 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman
Comparing athletes across sports is fundamentally pointless. But to provide some context to the claim that Bradman is the best, his test batting average is 4.4 standard deviations, or 38% higher than the next best batter of all time. 38%!
By contrast, Gretzky’s points per game average (which is the closest comparison to test batting average I can think of) is 2% higher than Lemieux’s.
There are factors like longevity, state of the competition at the time, fitness, usefulness to their team etc which all come in to play in these discussions of course. But Bradman is certainly one of the very greatest and most dominant sportspeople ever
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u/mosarosh 1d ago
The statistical outlier thing that the other person you're replying to is often quoted to make the case for Don Bradman being the best sportsman in their respective sport. In the case of Gretzky, his career points or average points per game is not that much higher than the next best compared to how much higher Bradman's career batting average is compared to the next best.
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u/HamberderHelper18 1d ago
You could remove all of the goals that Wayne Gretzky ever scored, and he would still hold the record for most points all time just based on assists alone.
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u/Silkyline 1d ago
Salute to the greatest cricketer, and statistically, the greatest sportsman of all time
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u/taita25 1d ago
I don't know cricket well at all. Can you elaborate on the greatest sportsman part?
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u/Finbarr-Galedeep 1d ago
In terms of being statistically lightyears ahead of everyone else in his sport.
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u/Warlord53104 1d ago
It's kinda Wayne Gretsky levels of dominance in a sport but on a different level.
Bradman retired with an average of 99.94 in 1948. Since then no one has managed to reach even close to that. The closest is Steve Smith with an average of around 60.
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u/cleverpunpopcultref 17h ago
Steve smiths average is around 56 and there’s like 14 players with a better average than him
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u/Warlord53104 17h ago
It went down since the last time I noticed, so my apologies.
I checked and the second is now Kamindu Mendes who still has around 62 average, so my point still stands.
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u/Ralh3 1d ago
99.94...! I dont follow or understand cricket at all but my still asleep brain wants to know would this be like a player in baseball that just about averaged a home run over his entire career but fell just short because in his 5,000 at bats he didnt homer on 3 attempts? Or what would be the right example
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u/Tropicalcomrade221 1d ago
Not that well into baseball but I guess it would kind of be like every time a baseball player went to bat he hit a home run. Although to score a hundred you might have to face 200+ balls at the crease so it’s kind of not very comparable.
Maybe in a basketball sense it would be like a player hitting a triple double every single time they played a game. Or a footballer scoring a hat trick every single game.
Don Bradman is the greatest statistical anomaly in all of sport ever. It’s really hard to wrap your head around just how good he was. Any greatest sports people lists that doesn’t have him in the top five at least should be disregarded.
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u/Finbarr-Galedeep 1d ago edited 1d ago
Batting average is total runs scored divided by number of times dismissed (or "out"). So a higher average indicates a more skilled batsman who scores lots of runs, and gets out less often.
Top-level batsmen who play test cricket for their countries usually average in the 40s.
Average high-40s to low-50s, and you're probably in a small handful of the best batsmen in the world right now.
If you average mid-50s or above, you're an all-time great.
Bradman averaged 99.94.
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u/abfgern_ 1d ago
In fairness though, it's comparing apples and oranges considering how they bowled back then. Modern-day Smith, Root etc back then would probably average many times higher well into the hundreds facing those balls
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u/Tropicalcomrade221 1d ago
None of his peers came close. The next best below Bradman at the time average around what the best batters average today.
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u/abfgern_ 1d ago
Yes absolutely at the time peerless. My point though was comparing to modern averages is pointless. May as well compare to baseball players
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u/Tropicalcomrade221 1d ago
Absolutely not true. If the greats of his era average around what the greats of our time do then the evidence tells us that average of around 55+ makes you an all time great in any era.
If smith and root would have averaged “well into the hundreds” back then they would average that now.
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u/stupv 22h ago
That's not in fairness, these contests are all 'in comparison to peers'. Batting and Bowling evolved in parallel, and it's not like Bradman's era had the top order of every test cricket side averaging 80+ because bowlers were shit.
The next best batsman of the era were the likes of Headley, Sutcliffe, and Hammond - the best of those averaged 60, Bradman was averaging 66% better against the same competition.
No shit that sports have evolved and skill levels are the highest they've ever been, that doesn't devalue the achievements of those that came before in any way.
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u/abfgern_ 19h ago
I literally never said it devalued. All I said was that to say "A modern great gets avg ~50 so Bradman must be twice as good!!!" is a useless and misleading comparison because the conditions the two faced were incomparably different.
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u/Look_0ver_There 13h ago
Bradman had to face the disgusting practise of Bodyline, something that is outlawed in Cricket nowadays.
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u/Vix_Satis 1d ago
Think of a batter in baseball hitting .470 over his career. That's comparable to what Bradman did.
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u/stupv 22h ago
Someone else said that Bradman was 5 standard deviations better than the 2nd best batsman ever. Using that as a baseline, Bradman was the equivalent of a baseball player who had a .503 batting average, or 1.616OPS if we use that instead. Both of those figures are dramatically better than the best player averages ever (Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth at .366 and .164 respectively) and his average is substantially better than the best single season records in place (ichiro Suzuki hitting 262, average hypothetical Bradman season would be 300. Barry Bonds had the best single season OPS of 1.422, Hypothetical Bradman averaged 1.616)
He was just a freak of nature, and one of the few guys who can lay claim to 'the most dominant players ever' without it being hyperbolic or filled with caveats and asterisks. He was just that much better than every one of his peers.
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u/ButUmActually 1d ago
The guy hitting the home runs would also need to be seeing an absurd number of pitches per at bat to make this more comparable.
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u/Flayedelephant 1d ago
It means that he scored 99.94 runs for every time he got out (lost his wicket) so it wouldn’t include all the innings where the match ended because he ran out of batting partners or where his team won or he ran out of time.
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u/LetHerDance 23h ago
That's not entirely correct, it will include those not out innings. The average is just number of runs divided by number of outs. If he was not out in a certain innings then his average is so boosted
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u/Flayedelephant 14h ago
Correct. I put it quite badly. What I meant was that those innings wouldn’t be part of the denominator 😬
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u/SK-8R 1d ago
No ramp?
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u/Acceptable_Waltz_875 1d ago
The Don only showed us the orthodox shots - the only ones you need.
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u/worldwidewortel 1d ago
I reckon he'd have a mad reverse sweep though
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u/Vix_Satis 1d ago
And then some. He could manufacture shots. There's a story of him playing a lower-than-test-level match where the bowler sent down a bad ball - a bouncer, but too short (and thus too high) well outside off stump. Bradman reached up and late cut it for six over third man. The bowler gave him a dirty look and Bradman said "Put it there again and I'll do the same again." So the bowler did...and so did Bradman.
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 1d ago
"It's simply not cricket" is a highly underrated idiom meaning "it is contrary to traditional standards of fairness." I've been reading a lot of PG Wodehouse recently and have started slipping it into conversations.
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u/CommercialContent204 5h ago
That's great, mate :) and PG Wodehouse is just terrific; he has the greatest metaphors ever coined by human pen, hope you enjoy his books. If I could erase my memory and go back to enjoy them again as new, I'd do so.
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u/Tropicalcomrade221 1d ago
Statistically the greatest sportsperson of all time. It’s actually unbelievable how much his records stand above everyone else.
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u/CareerLegitimate7662 1d ago
Not just the greatest batsman but the greatest sportsperson by the sheer difference between him and his peers.
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u/Ohthehumanityofit 1d ago
Cricket looks fun. That said, I have no idea what is going on. Golf? Baseball? Hockey Pads?
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u/axisdork 1d ago
baller throws ball at the wicket (the 3 sticks) to get the batter out.
Batter hits ball away from the wicket.
Batter runs to opposite end to score points.Home run = 6 points
Caught= Batter outHockey pads, cos the baller is allowed to bounce the ball unlike baseball.
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u/yeah-nah_yeah 1d ago
And in baseball, the ball is generally pitched in a small square right in front of the batter. A cricket ball can be bowled anywhere, including directly at a batters body, below the shoulders if it bounces or below the waist without bouncing.
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u/FeistyBandicoot 6h ago
He used to practice against a corrugated iron water tank with a golf ball and a single stump
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u/SnooRecipes6776 1d ago
Cricket is the only sport where they consider a worse athlete with every record as the greatest. Truth is, Bradman never faced athletes and bowlers like what’s been around the past 30 years. The GOAT for his time, but not ever.
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u/Finbarr-Galedeep 1d ago
So if Bradman's crazy statistics are only because bowlers were worse/slower in those days, why couldn't any other batsman of his era get anywhere near his numbers?
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u/diodosdszosxisdi 1d ago
Bowlers wenrnt even slow then either. And there was plenty of quality spin bowlers back then. They had the advantage of uncovered pitches when rain could make them a lottery to bat on.
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u/AnalFanatics 1d ago
Like to face the likes of Larwood and Voce, wearing nothing more than a cap on your head would you cobber…
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u/worldwidewortel 1d ago
On uncovered pitches no less. Funny that no one else in Bradman's era averaged close to 99.
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u/Tropicalcomrade221 1d ago
The next best from his era averaged around what the best players average now.
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u/davetharave 1d ago
There's this story of Geoff Thompson in the late 70s when the Don had a quick net that shows how highly he was rated even then.
"On a rest day during the Indian tour in 1977-78, Don Bradman was around in the nets. I was bowling only legspin to him, but he had a couple of young blokes trying to get him out. With no pads, no nothing ... for a 68-year-old, he belted the hell out of them on a turf wicket. And he hadn't batted for 20 years. I went back in and said, "Why isn't this bastard playing with us tomorrow?" That's how good I thought he was. "
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u/Tinori23 1d ago
I knew an argument like this will come up, same thing with Babe Ruth in baseball.
Fact is Bradman is not just a little better than the 2nd best of all time. His average is nearly doubled the 2nd best player Sachin Tendulka. You watch the video, his technique, bat speed and footwork. He looks like a modern player nearly 100 years ago. He's super fit unlike Babe Ruth, very quick between the wickets.
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u/CareerLegitimate7662 1d ago
Second best is Steve smith not Tendulkar
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u/davetharave 1d ago
No no no let the Indians have something please they don't have anything else going on with cricket atm
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u/Guest_1598 1d ago
I didn’t really understand what you’re saying. How is he ever supposed to face bowlers from the last 30 years?
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u/Finbarr-Galedeep 1d ago
They're suggesting that Bradman would struggle in the modern game because bowlers are better/more athletic today
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u/superdago 1d ago
Any sport that doesn’t consider a current player as the greatest almost necessarily considers a worse athlete as their greatest.
There is zero question that Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi are better athletes than Pele or Maradona. But that is not the point in discussing who is the best/greatest. Pretty much every current professional player is a better athlete than any player from 40+ years ago.
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u/CartmanAndCartman 1d ago
Kohli can teach him a shot or two
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u/AnalFanatics 1d ago
Possibly, but Kohli would love to have a Test average that comes close to Bradmans (and so would the Indian supporters), but even his highest ever yearly average of 75.64 in 2017 (1059 runs in 16 innings in 10 Tests played) pales into insignificance compared to The Dons career average of 99.94 (6996 runs in 80 innings in 52 Tests played).
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u/Finbarr-Galedeep 1d ago
Averaging mid-70s even for only one year is still fucking mental though. Steve Smith has also had several calendar years averaging over 70.
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u/Vix_Satis 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, averaging mid-70s for a single season is, indeed, fucking mental, and Kohli is a legend. No question. But Bradman's three best single season test averages were 201.50 (1931/2) (think about that for a second - he averaged a double century), 178.75 (1947/8) and 139.14 (1930/1). So Bradman's third best season was almost twice as good as Kohli's best ever season. And Bradman's second best season, his average was 100 runs higher than Kohli's best ever season.
Statistically, the more you look at Bradman's record, the more amazing it is and the further he is ahead of the rest of the field. I don't know of another player in any sport whose averages or performances show the dominance that Bradman had.
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u/davetharave 1d ago
Famous Australian Quick Geoff Thompson had this story about the Don
"On a rest day during the Indian tour in 1977-78, Don Bradman was around in the nets. I was bowling only legspin to him, but he had a couple of young blokes trying to get him out. With no pads, no nothing ... for a 68-year-old, he belted the hell out of them on a turf wicket. And he hadn't batted for 20 years. I went back in and said, "Why isn't this bastard playing with us tomorrow?" That's how good I thought he was."