2004 Team v 2024 Team

[Googly]

They wore those rubber spiked gloves back then.
You're breaking your hands and fingers if you try that today.
If you're lucky you'd last a season.
Nobody was bowling 135 on a shit deck unless the batters all had bionic hands.


Ya nobody will ever ever convince me about him transitioning into a modern great. I just sat thru a 26 min clip of the likes of Barry Richards, Nasser Hussein, Gatting, Border and some other annoying dude extolling his abilities. Those same guys would have told you to mask up two years ago. I've now got my teeth into this

When a modern great gets asked specifically about him none of them are going to incur the wrath of a nation and the cricketing fraternity in general, I take it with a pinch of salt. Twice as good as Barry Richards c'mon!
And compare Richards to Kholi, Tendulkar, Kallis, Lara etc.
Again I'm saying Richards was not as good. Amazing player and had the privelege of watching him and Pollock as a kid, but no. Even that older generation when they commentate shake their heads at what the batters can do now, and that's in 20 years.
Look at batting stances- bat with your feet together a bat width apart and bat behind your back foot and see how you go against modern quicks. That was my era as well, straight out of the Robin Jackman Dairiboard sponsored cricket package he used to hand out.

Also watched Bradman at length. He is better than I first thought and moved his feet really well and hit the gaps, but the bowling he faced was absolutely rank, as was the fielding. They all looked so awkward when batting, that's what I can't wrap my head around. They're not at one with the bat.

That particularly annoying guy banged on about the bats- saying he'd have averaged 199 with a modern bat. That's absolute bullshit as well. Modern bats dont make you score twice as much You hit an old Duncan Fernley in the sweet spot and it's traveling. Why would mis-hits matter in a test with an old bat when you hit it along the ground anyway, you're still getting a single or two. Sure they make a difference when you're hitting out. Miss hits can go for 6, but they're also smoking it twice as hard as a malnourished 5ft 4 dude who can't bench press 50 lbs.

[zimbos_05]

*double post*

[zimbos_05]

I posted a clip of him trying to hit a golf ball, which if he'd practiced more he'd have been a lot better at, and a 1 min clip of him giving some batting instruction that doesn't stand up to modern scrutiny. Oh and one article. Took 2 minutes.
That's hardly great lengths, bud.
It's all a bit moot, but one thing for certain is that he didn't consistently face bowlers that are anything like "modern" bowlers. Plus if you take short bowling out of the equation that's half the game at that level, more if you show you're susceptible to it.
The only thing I can't argue about are the pitches. Without a good camera behind the wicket you can't see how they actually played. If a guy is bowling 125 kph seamers in the modern game and it's nipping around on a shit deck it's almost unplayable, so the same would hold true for 1930 and before. If someone's going to argue that he'd mastered that....
That to me shows that either the pitches were not that bad or the bowlers didn't land it consistently enough, take your pick.

You say you're not trying to discredit him, but you really going to great lengths to prove your point here.

Ofcourse the instruction he gives looks poor because the game has changed. That's not to say the instruction he gave was shit. At the time, he was the best, and he backed up that instruction by what he did on the field. If it was so easy to play at that time, then why does not one else have stats anything close to Bradman? The bowling was so shit, them any half decent batsmen back then should have been able to get insane figures.

You can't take short bowling out of the equation. If anything, that goes to show his class more. He faced Bodyline, and did so without the protective gear we have now, yet he still produced the figures he did. He was so popular, that the Americans paid for him and the Aus team to do an ODI tour in the states. He wasn't facing shit bowlers. You're stating those bowlers were not bowling the same consistent line and length, but how can you prove that? You just basing it off grainy footage but don't have a heat map to correlate. I watch those bowlers and see some fast unpredictable bowling. Nowadays a batter can predict a ball based on what they see, whereas Bradman didn't have that luxury.

Basically what you are doing is stating that if Bradman is any good, then there must have been something terribly wrong for him to be so. You're refusing to accept that he was just the best of his time, and perhaps, given the regime of the modern cricketer today, he would still be as good.

By extension, if you're saying Bradman is shit and that a modern player is better than him simply because they are a modern player, you're also saying that the likes of Viv Richards, Jim Laker, Garfield Sobers, Malcolm Marshall, Imran Khan etc are all shit too.

Aborigines don’t care for it.

It's a shame considering the first international tour was an Indigenous side. Eddie Gilbert was a pioneer

[Pat_Bee]

So is old Bradman scoring more off our 2004 team or 2024 team is the real question

[Googly]

you're also saying that the likes of Viv Richards, Jim Laker, Garfield Sobers, Malcolm Marshall, Imran Khan etc are all shit too.

C'mon bud, I'm not saying that at all.

I'm not trying to discredit Bradman or anybody. Let's recap here-
The discussion was merely whether you could take a guy from a previous era and plonk him into the current one. My argument is that the further back you go the less likely that is. Khan, Sobers, Marshall and Richards would likely be up to speed in no time, dunno about Laker.

The consensus about Bradman is that he probably wouldn't feature unless he'd had the same opportunities, practice, coaching, magic bat etc (at least sane people concede that) as the current guys and then he'd miraculously be twice as good again because he's twice as good as any human that has ever lived.

I'm in the 1% that calls absolute horseshit to that fantasy.
I was in the 1% that called horseshit to covid and tissue masks as well. Coincidence?

[Googly]

In the Bodyline series Bradman averaged 56. That average was because he scored 256 in the second test where Larwood was injured and didn't play.
Larwood was the real threat and hit some uncomfortable lengths.

[Googly]

Here's a good one that gets people's BP going-
Would Viv Richards have featured if you'd plonked him into modern T20?
Just as a side note if he'd faced Brett Lee or Alan Donald without a helmet he'd eventually have gotten badly hurt. That would have been Russian Roulette that ended badly.
Both would have taken exception to a guy with no helmet, he'd not have gotten one delivery in his half.
Lee was the most accurate bouncer bowler in history. He was a savage. Sir Viv refused to face bouncers in the nets, he'd walk out. Actually didn't even like netting, said it made him claustrophic, which many batters claim actually, especially narrow nets. So the best batter of his generation didn't practice much. Mmmm...
I know how that works in modern sport, maybe those older guys were magic.

He had an old fashioned stance, wouldn't have had the clever shots behind square, he'd have been a V banger like Chris Gayle. Would he have been in the same league as Gayle? For me not even close, probably would have done well though.

[Googly]

Larwood was a guy really ahead of his time and lab geeks could probably figure out how quick he was. There was a claim that they'd worked out he was 10kph faster than Brett Lee
That's rubbish. It's this primal urge to exaggerate a myth.
Goliath was 6 cubits and a span- 9ft 9 inches

[zimbos_05]

C'mon bud, I'm not saying that at all.

I'm not trying to discredit Bradman or anybody. Let's recap here-
The discussion was merely whether you could take a guy from a previous era and plonk him into the current one. My argument is that the further back you go the less likely that is. Khan, Sobers, Marshall and Richards would likely be up to speed in no time, dunno about Laker.

The consensus about Bradman is that he probably wouldn't feature unless he'd had the same opportunities, practice, coaching, magic bat etc (at least sane people concede that) as the current guys and then he'd miraculously be twice as good again because he's twice as good as any human that has ever lived.

I'm in the 1% that calls absolute horseshit to that fantasy.
I was in the 1% that called horseshit to covid and tissue masks as well. Coincidence?

But you are. You are saying that olden day players are not as good as current ones. What I am saying is that you have a point about the technique and so on, but you have to look at everything in context. Certain players in the past were actually really good. You can't discredit that at all.

You keep saying you're not trying to discredit him, but then keeping making posts where you say things like, "his average in bodyline was only good because Larwood didn't play". That infers that Bradman is shit.

As for the Viv Richards question. I sure as shit would want him in my T20 team.

As for covid, i'm not getting into conspiracy theories but also, please use cover your mouth when you cough.

[Googly]

In every sport on the planet they're not as good, maybe cricket 100 years ago was the exception. I'm not discrediting anyone, it's about perspective.

The larwood absence is just fact. Bradman was a mortal.
A 256 score against larwood, whom he struggled against was unlikely. Every batter has a bowler he doesn't like, why should Bradman be the exception? Maybe he'd have averaged 40, it's hardly shit, probably would have still topped the averages. He was a great player.
I'm also prepared to bet that every single well directed bouncer hit someone. They had no idea how to avoid them or play them. And not a single broken hand in that series with beefed up gardening gloves? Brett Lee would have killed more people than Billy the Kid

Oh here's the other thing about bowling in the 30's- not a lot of swing bowling on offer, not many trickster spinners either. The Don ain't averaging 99 against Murali, Warne, The Waq attack, the WI big 4 etc etc. Nor is he averaging 65. Its just not happening. Sorry boss. I'll give u 51 to hopefully stop the argument as we're not going to agree.
I'd really have gone with not making the side, but maybe that's too extreme

Sir Viv wouldn't be in my top 8 T20 sides. Fantastic as he was he didnt even play the format. Too many good T20 bats out there these days. T20 cricket has moved on.
You want to pick a bloke who never even played the game?
And it is a different game.