JOIN US‘Bradmanesque’: A hat-tip to exceptional scoring feats
The 1986-87 Indian domestic cricket season saw Arun Lal produce five centuries, including two near triple hundreds (identical scores of 287) and two double hundreds. All this happened in a span of fourteen weeks and ten innings played for three separate sides – Bengal, East Zone, and Rest of India – and was reported at some length, and with some pride, in The Telegraph, the daily I had been ordered to consume for enriching my English. The paper’s enthusiasm was understandable. Its home, Kolkata, happened to be Lal’s too, and the bulk of its readership was drawn from the state and region, West Bengal and East Zone, that Lal was leading that season.
This was around the time Graeme Hick was piling the runs for Worcestershire, and together M/s Lal and Hick had my cricket-discovering, English-challenged mind struggling for superlatives. The apt word – Bradmanesque – came via the pages of Sportstar. It must have been an old edition or a reminiscence piece because the article was about Allan Border, and my research for this piece suggests that Border, while hardly infertile during the late eighties, did not merit the tag at that juncture. Or maybe my memory is failing, and the article wasn’t about Border after all. Anyway, Bradmanesque seemed a fitting description for the kind of run Lal and Hick were having.
Bradmanesque. The word is a nice hat-tip to extraordinary scoring feats, an acknowledgment of how rare and enormous they are – but just, and rightly, stops short of a direct comparison to a man who ended his international career with an average of nearly a hundred and actually scored one every other time he took guard. It concedes that the in-form man has done enough to remind the game’s followers of Bradman’s exploits, that he is presently displaying a level of batsmanship that comes close to Bradman’s – but holds back opinion on whether he can match the real deal.
There is also the small matter of the titles of Black Bradman and Asian Bradman already being taken, and the English and Kiwis being too proud a cricketing rival to the Australians to have their own Bradmans thrust on them. So, Bradmanesque is acceptable, thank you. Better still, switch to Hobbs-esque or Crowe-sque.
In short, with ‘Bradmanesque’, Bradman remains on the high pedestal he occupies while the Bradmanesque get to bask in the comparison itself. This is fair. For sustaining Bradmanesque forms is tough amidst multiple formats, tiring itineraries, more defensive fields and fitter fieldsmen, and video-scouring analysts quick to spot chinks in armors.
Ask Mohammad Yousuf, who amassed more Test runs and hundreds in a single calendar year (2006) than any man before or since and averaged 99 during it, but managed just one hundred and an average of 37 over the next three years his career lasted. Or Michael Clarke who averaged 106 in 2012, and 38.5 in the next three before hanging up his boots.
Or Andy Flower, Brian Lara, Hashim Amla, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Jacques Kallis, Joe Root, Kane Williamson, Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayewardene, Matthew Hayden, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar, and Virat Kohli, the leading batsmen of our times, all of whom haven’t had more than two consecutive calendar years with even a 70-plus Test average. In fact, many a time their best year (or two) has been followed by a distinctly sub-par one (or two).
Which is what makes the latest man whose exploits have earned the Bradmanesque tag, Steve Smith, special. Smith had a 70-plus Test average for four years running from 2014-17 and is going at hundred-plus now in 2019, 2018 being a lost cause for reasons well-known and well-deserved.
Realistically speaking, there are zero chances of Smith replacing Bradman on the top of the batting average chart. Even if he was to enjoy the longevity of a Ponting, it would mean averaging around 170 for the rest of his career! That is as tall an order as is conceivable at the batting crease. Even Bradman would have baulked.
Thankfully, post-Bradman era players, aware that Bradman’s was a different time, haven’t gotten themselves overly fussed about trying to better the Australian master’s record. There is, one imagines, pride in the Bradmanesque tag but it has – rightly – been taken as a flattering adjective. Nothing more. There are other innings to be played, other challenges around the corner, and pressures aplenty to carry through the journey. It’s a world teeming with many real challenges, a fantasy is the last thing they want to be chasing, a phantom the last thing they want to contend with.
(Manish Dubey is a policy analyst and writer)
The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.