The case for Don Bradman

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For reasons beyond our remit to explore here, a Clinton era aphorism coined by a presidential adviser is back in vogue: “It’s the economy, stupid”. Varying it only slightly to explain why any contemplation of the all-time greats of sport must have Don Bradman at the top, it’s the numbers, stupid.

Bradman’s average, 99.94, is Australia’s PIN, the way into everywhere anyone needs to go. The tale of how he landed there, making a duck in his last Test innings when one boundary would have given him an average of 100 dead, is one of the country’s founding stories. But the margin between his average and everyone else’s looks like some sort of corruption in the planet’s software.

Statistician Charles Davis compared Bradman with other prominent sportsmen, including soccer’s Pele, golf’s Jack Nicklaus and basketball star Michael Jordan, using the number of standard deviations above the norm in their sports. Bradman was far and away the best.

Donald Bradman playing at the SCG in 1947. Credit: Archives

More than 40 other men have averaged greater than 50 in Test cricket, but the next best to Bradman is barely more than 60. That makes the Don worth two players, at least. Cricket writing doyen Ray Robinson once noted: “Don Bradman had at least one great advantage over other Test captains – himself batting for his own cause.”

You can put in all the caveats you like about the strength of the opposition, the depth and breadth of the game, covered and uncovered wickets, balls, bats, all the ways the game has changed, but the fact is that Bradman was light years ahead of anyone in his time and anyone previously or since. The game changes, but the margin between Bradman and mere mortals does not.

No one younger than their mid-80s can claim to have a cogent memory of watching Bradman play. Camera technology was rudimentary, leaving us now a few flickering glimpses and his own nasally accounts. Bradman exists almost entirely now in our folklore rather than in the mind’s eye with the still vivid force of, say, Shane Warne.

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