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Comment by clarky07 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not ashamed to admit I had to look up Donald Bradman. Cricket? That's the analogy you went with? :-)

I had to look him up to, but once I found this, I understood why he went with Donald Bradman over Pele or Jordan or Ali.

http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/the-most-remarkable-graph-in-...

I assume OP is from the commonwealth. Don Bradman is a household name here

And I ask you is he any good?

With an average of almost 100, he was the very best and will be the benchmark that all future greats will be compared to.

'Tis a line from the chorus of a famous (?) song about him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDWaeBE2AY

  Our Don Bradman - And I ask you is he any good?
  Our Don Bradman - As a bastman he can sure lay on the wood.
  For when he goes in to bat
  He knocks ev'ry record flat,
  For there isn't any thing he cannot do,
  Our Don Bradman - Ev'ry Aussie "dips his lid" to you.

Oh woosh! :)

That graph is something else. Interestingly if you saw that for an athlete today, how many people wouldn't automatically assume drug use?

Bradman could presumably have used drugs. But then so could others.

A quick search revealed this http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineI... review of the use of performance enhancing drugs (from the original Greek Olympics on to modern times) which I found diverting.

That is really interesting - particularly some of the things they thought would be enhancing performance.

I want to see a version of the Olymipcs where all the contestants are off their faces on opium.

The amazing ending to the story is that in his last innings, "The Don" required 4 runs to reach an average of 100, but got out for a duck (zero) on the second ball. Apparently the ovation he got on entering the ground rattled him. The article below gives a description and makes the case that it was a fitting ending for a great, more memorable than if he had got the runs.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/bradmans-last-innings...

there is pretty much no one who has dominated a sport the way bradman dominated cricket, i think. consider - he has the highest lifetime test batting average of all time, at 99.94. which doesn't perhaps sound that impressive, out of context, until you see that the next three people in the record books have averages of 60.97, 60.83 and 60.73. he was more than 50% better than the second-best test batsman around.

Not sure how cricket compares to baseball, but in the 20s and 30s the overall talent level was nowhere near what it's become in modern times.

Saying that, Bradman's batting average is absurdly high, does 99.94 mean that nearly everytime he went to bat he was able to put the ball in play without the opposing team being able to get him out?

If so, the equivalent in baseball would be almost always getting a hit (closest in modern era was, I believe, .424 by Ted Williams), something that would require the hand/eye coordination of superman, basically.

well, "putting the ball in play" is not as hard in cricket as in baseball; the 99 refers to runs, not a percentage. but getting more than 100 runs in a game (known as a century) is a reasonably significant feat in cricket; that bradman's average was almost 100 runs is spectacular.

Not quite, but close.

In cricket you (and a second batter who is with you) stay at bat until you are dismissed. There are a number of ways to be dismissed, such as being caught on the full or run out, but you don't need to put every ball into play. In order to score runs you generally must play the ball, but trying to score runs increases your risk of being dismissed.

The best batsman are able to both score runs and minimise their risk of being dismissed, and so are able to stay in bat for longer and score higher totals.

Bradman was, on average, able to score almost 100 runs every time he went out to bat, and that is just ridiculous.

What an average of 99.94 means is every time he went to play he scored an average ~100 runs. Which is just too remarkable. And that too in test cricket.

Test cricket is just what it is, its a test of patience and concentration. You are supposed to play unreasonably long amounts of time(the whole day) in scorching heat. There fore to go in and play that, it just means one thing. Not only where his batting skills top notch in the history of the game, his ability to focus, concentrate has not been matched ever since. Please note bowlers are always on the look out to get your out. And there are literally many way in which you can get out.

This isn't just sport. This is meditation.

In terms of "sportsman who is so far ahead of his peers that it's almost impossible to explain how", then yes, I think Bradman fits the bill!

OP is Aussie. As a fellow Aussie this makes perfect sense

I am curious to hear your thoughts on which sportsperson is a more appropriate analogy?

Wayne Gretzky?

Cricket has a much, much bigger audience globally than Ice Hockey - there's a lot of Europeans, Australians, South Africans and Indians on HN who have likely never seen a hockey game :-)

It's also not so much of a team game - cricket statistics are much more likely to reveal an outlier than hockey, football, rugby or handball. It's possible to separate to a much greater extent a player from the quality of their team - if you put me and three other random guys on a basketball team with Michael Jordan, he would look a lot less impressive than he did with one of the greatest teams ever assembled! The same goes for Messi, Maradona, Gretzky, etc. Their talents need, and encourage to some extent, wonderful performances from their teammates to make passes, runs, tackles, interceptions, etc.

The only effect that a similar substitution would have on Bradman would be that he'd need to concentrate on 4s and 6s and keeping the rest of us 'in' long enough. If you wanted to sub in a North American sportsman as an outlier, it would need to be a baseball player, I guess :-)

Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with. While his feat is impressive, it is I'm guessing widely unknown. Perhaps Jordan, Ali, Gretzky, Babe Ruth would seem more appropriate.

For those not too familiar with cricket, that "average" isn't like a batting average in baseball. While incredibly impressive, it is not equivalent to getting a hit 100% of the time.

As for impressive feats above and beyond, Babe Ruth comes to mind. He hit more home runs in a season than many entire teams did at the time.

OP apparently isn't from the USA; I'd imagine in OP's cultural context the Bambino is less well known, baseball being a mostly North American sport.

Let's not forget we have an international readership here :-)

True, but I suspect the other three are more well known by far more people. If we want to go international, I'd put Pele out there before Mr. Bradman

Babe Ruth? So by "a higher percentage of people" you mean "Americans and few others"

I suspect that Babe Ruth might actually be comparable. People that know a little bit about baseball know him. People that know a little bit about cricket know Bradman.

Ali and Jordan on the other hand are pretty much known by everyone. Pele would be another good example.

that's pretty american-centric. as an indian i'd say ali was truly world-famous, jordan is well known to my generation due to nba catching on in the 80s but i'm betting a large chunk of my parent's generation wouldn't know him, i only knew about babe ruth from reading american fiction, and i'd pretty much never heard of gretzky until last year.

It's obviously American centric because American media has been dominate at a global level for decades. That's the reason so many people know who eg Tiger Woods and Jordan are: American media made them famous to a degree far exceeding their accomplishments. The same holds true in music, movies, tv shows, and so on.

Jordan was widely regarded as one of the most famous people on earth for 15 or 20 years. His name is even more famous than his picture. I don't think there's much debate to be had about his global fame frankly. As basketball globalized rapidly in the late 80's / early 90's, it was his image intertwined with it, and it perfectly coincided with the rise of global media.

It's got more to do with the audience for the sport. Golf is played all over the world. On the other hand, a famous American Football quarterback could travel incognito in most of the world, because the international audience for American football is tiny by comparison.

so you have in fact heard of all of them. I think that pretty much proves my point, but I could also throw Pele in there for a non american that is far far more well known than Mr. Bradman.

> Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with.

Actually, given India's huge population, I think it is more likely than not that more people are familiar with cricket than are familiar with baseball.

For example - http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/04/04/cricket-wor...

Eddy Merckx?

My friend just got to ride with and photograph Eddy: http://pelotonmagazine.com/shutter/flanders-dispatch-day-one...

The guy's still going strong.

Wow... I'm envious! That's really cool.

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