Greatness of Legends – Tendulkar & Sir Bradman

The debate though is not whether Bradman is the greatest of all, but who is the second best. Here comes Sachin Tendulkar in the picture. Is he behind Bradman in all-time greats list.

By any stretch of imagination Sir Donald Bradman was the greatest batsmen ever to walk the earth. Statistics give a decent enough idea while comparing sportsmen of different eras, but Bradman, like his fool-proof and compact technique, has kept his statistical graph so high that no batsman could get anywhere near his staggering figures.

Even Bradman applauded Tendulkar's greatness when he said the Indian's batting style is somewhat similar to his.

Cricket writer Peter Lalor puts out some interesting facts in his blog while discussing the finer points on Bradman and Tendulkar in The Australian.

Some felt that Sunil Gavaskar implicitly rated Tendulkar higher than Bradman, but a careful reading of the veteran Indian maestro's statement reveal he was talking about technique, Lalor writes.

"For all Bradman's achievements, Tendulkar is the closest thing to batting perfection I've seen, in terms of technique and temperament," Gavaskar said when Tendulkar passed Bradman's record for Test centuries.

"If you have a look at some of the film of Bradman, you see his bat came from third man. Because Bradman was Bradman, he could see the ball incredibly early and score at a phenomenal rate.

"Tendulkar's bat comes down very straight, he is perfectly balanced off either foot, and there is not a shot he cannot play.

"He is probably the most complete batsman the game has seen."

Gavaskar noted when he passed Bradman's record of 29 centuries in 1983 that there could be no comparison. "Bradman's tally is still the record. It will only be surpassed if a batsman gets 30 hundreds in 52 Tests," he said.

Gavaskar got his 30th hundred in his 99th Test, Tendulkar took 93 Tests.

One of the great cricket writers, EW Swanton, explained some of Bradman's domination in an article he wrote in 1998. "For the benefit of the generations who have been born to the game since Bradman's retirement in 1948, here for digestion are a few facts," Swanton wrote.

"His Test average is 99.94. Only three other batsmen in history have achieved as much as 60. He is the only man who has scored over 300 Test runs in a day. His 974 in 1930 is far and away the most scored in a Test series.

"The most detailed analysis of his batting, from his arrival aged 19 to his retirement at 40, is to be found in BJ Wakley's Bradman the Great, published in 1959. There one may learn not only that he made hundreds (117 of them) in more than a third of his innings, but that of his 338 innings, 16 were ducks while 37 were upwards of 200. He was run out only four times, only once after he reached the age of 21. He scored almost half as fast again as his partners. He made all his runs at 42 per hour, and his average stay at the wicket was 2hr14min."

It is impossible to compare both of them. Both are legends of their era.