The previous posts raise an issue that may occur to anyone not familiar with cricket, viz. maybe Bradman looks so good because no-one else was/is terribly good. This is difficult to address across sports but let me say that the echelon below Bradman has players every bit as good as Brown, Payton, Sanders, Smith (& OJ - forgot him last time, but despite any moral distaste, he must be acknowledged as a great RB) etc.. For example, the best batsman in the World for the last ten years has been/is Sachin Tendulkar. He is a brilliant batsman. On a comparative scale, he is what you would get if you could combine Payton and Sanders. He can demolish any bowlers when on form, incuding current great bowlers, such as, Warne, Pollock and Muralitharan. At both their best, Bradman could not have been better, except by a hair. The difference that makes all the difference is consistency. Over a twenty year career, interrupted by WW2, Bradman averaged a test century every 2.25 innings and never went more than 11 innings without a century. As superb as Tendulkar is, he has not matched that degree of consistent domination. That is not to denigrate him but, rather, to appreciate the incredible career of the Don.

The injury to Emmitt Smith has provided a useful pause to evaluate judiciously his career and to assess it in the shadow of Bradman. Bradmetrics barely suppressed a rant or two during the period Smith passed Payton on the total rushing yardage chart. This was out of deference to the family of the great “Sweetness”, with whom Smith has maintained a close relationship, by all accounts. A mere sports blog should not second-guess the Payton family.

It is, however, clear that Smith’s crown is tainted. For the last two seasons with the Cowboys, Smith was not the best Dallas running back yet he was given that spot, so we believe, just so he could take Payton’s record. His fall from grace has been further amplified by his woeful performance with the wretched Cards. This is not the way records should be set, much less the record of a true sports legend.

Yet, it is already clear that rants were not in order. Yes, Smith has the record but everyone knows who was the greatest all-round back - Walter Payton. Barry Sanders’ revelation of his reasons for quitting only amplify the relative insignificance of records when assessments of sporting glory are at stake. Sanders was the best pure runner, Brown the best power runner but Payton remains the gold standard for an all-round RB. In that company, Smith had a great career, in fairness; group him with Dickerson, Harris and Dorsett.

Statistically, we’re comparing performances within a few percentage points. Brown’s career average yardage is about 20% than the others named above. Adjusted for average size of defensive players our guess is that shrinks a fair bit. Which again goes to emphasize the yawning gap between Bradman and his nearest statistical challengers (around 60 Test batting average - a cool 60% difference, approximately.)

The announcement of Steve Waugh’s plan to retire from Test cricket has led to a number of media stories that bracket his career with the Don. This is an ideal opportunity, therefore, to remind sportsfans of how incomparable Bradman was.

Waugh will retire with either the record for total Test runs or will remain second to countryman Alan Border, depending on how he fares in the series against India. His average will be about 51.
Bradman’s Test average was 100 (rounded).

Are the bowlers Waugh faced or the fielding that much more superlative than were the case for Bradman that these factors could account for an average almost half of the Don’s? We think not. This is not to denigrate Steve Waugh, clearly an all-time great and arguably among the top 2 or 3 of the last 25 years. Rather, let us ponder the stupendous feats of the Bowral Boy!

The issues raised by the debate about the relative value of Beckham and Owen has direct application to the astounding career of Don Bradman.

There are four obvious possible ways of explaining the huge statistical gulf between Bradman's average and his nearest rivals and all have been invoked by those who would minimize his achievements.

(1) Introduce some sort of quality differential, e.g. the elegance of strokeplay (a favourite of advocates of Frank Wooley).
(2) Focus on a subset of innings to make that argument that on "bad wickets" he was no better than other great batsman.
(3) Reinterpret the numerator - i.e. runs scored - to dismiss many of Bradman's runs as "piling it on" or "scoring for scoring's sake", in a way that other greats did not e.g. Hobbs, who was said to give up his wicket to allow another batsman a chance on good wicket.
(4) Deflate the numerator by reference to the alleged (poor) quality of opposition bowling and/or the (high) quality of his team-mates, again, relative to other greats.

To these standard arguments I would add another, in which, I am particularly interested.

(5) Boost the rating of great all-rounders.

The latter involves inventing some sort of measure that equates the value of runs scored and wickets taken.

These all have their counterparts in other sports comparisons. In the case of football, the greatest difficulty, analogous to bowling vs batting, concerns scoring vs defence. This is dramatized by the relative greatness of goalkeepers vs all outplayers. That issue may be insoluble; it's probably just as well to only compare goalies against goalies and this is likely true for pure defenders, too.

Midfielders are a far more intriguing case. Many great scorers were also great midfielders. Pele is the obvious example but Kocsis and Puskas were inside forwards, who, in the "W" formation of their era were cast as goal-makers rather than scorers. While one of the tactical innovations of that great Hungarian team of the early 50s was to play Hidegkuti as a "deep" centre forward, Puskas and Kocsis were more than pure "strikers", in modern terminology. Just as a current note, the comparison between Beckham and his fellow Red, Paul Scholes, is perhaps more revealing of the the "lifestyle" dimension of the Beckham phenomemon than the comparison with Owen. Scholes has scored 114 goals over 431 games for an average of 0.26; for England he has scored 13 in 54 games at a 0.27 average. Has Beckham set up that many more goals than Scholes? His he a better ball-winner?

On another note: the Beeb seems to have corrected its Shearer stats now - 30 goals it is. This is part of a continuing fall from grace; once a paragon of "objectivity" and accuracy, across the board "Auntie" looks more and more like an old hag. While it corrected the Shearer error, it has a list of highest English scorers on its page reporting on the Slovakia game (in which Owen scored both goals in a shaky England win) that is not quite accurate. First let me provide a good source: .
Greaves' and Lofthouse's appearances and (for Greaves) goals include matches subsequently derated by the FIFA as not First-class matches. This is a bit nitpicky but of more importance is their omission of Geoff Hurst, who scored 24 goals in 49 games; not merely the hat-trick hero of England's sole World Cup Final triumph but an all-round great centre forward.

Quick points on three entries on the Beeb's table. Lofthouse and Mortensen scored collectively 54 goals in 58 games. As they would agree, I'm sure (I'm not sure if Morty is still alive but Nat is an archetypal Lancashire man - as honest as you get) a huge percentage of those were courtesy of the genius of Stan Matthews. Also scoring 30 goals, but in 76 games, we have the most underrated great player, bar none - Tom Finney, who played largely as Matthews wing partner but was a great scorer, too.

David Beckham is in the News again today in Canada; one of a handful of footballers that merit attention by North American sports media. Statistically Beckham's high profile is mysterious to say the least. He has scored 97 goals in 457 games, for an average of 0.21 goals per game; for England he has scored 11 goals in 61 games. As a contrast with a contemporary, Michael Owen has scored 20 in 47 England games, average 0.43. His overall record is 158 goals in 304 games, average 0.52. Owen commands some negligible fraction of the media attention accorded to Beckham. Even more notable is the career of Alan Shearer. There is confusion in his England stats; the BBC page gives him 37 goals but three other web sources give him only 30. Since he retired from England duty in 2002 with 63 caps under his belt he's pretty respectable either way. Overall, assuming the higher figure for England he's cracked in 355 goals in 660 games at a rate of 0.54 per game. Only Ian Rush (374/731) and Jimmy Greaves (400+/572+) have scored more top-flight goals among English players. (If anyone has reliable stats on Greaves' Italian career and his FA Cup goals that would let me remove the +'s - my guess is he scored about 450 in total).

The statistical issue raised by Beckham is two-fold: how to measure performance other than goalscoring; and, the lack of records on "assists".Beckham is a midfielder and he assists on many goals. Here a comparison with Bobby Charlton is instructive, who scored 296 goals over 857 games at a clip of 0.35, 49 (still the England record, the underrated Lineker got 48 in 80 games) for his country in 105 games at a 0.47 clip. It's true that for the early part of his career - maybe as much as 200 games - he played as a forward. That's still a whopping gap and Charlton would have assisted on about the same number of goals as Beckham. Moreover, I would guess that an even higher proportion of Charlton's goals were "highlight reel" quality than Beckham's and that's not to decry Beckham but to note Charlton's remarkable career. In his day, Charlton may even have been as famous World-wide as Beckham; certainly the way to get a free beer even in Iron-curtain countries in the 1970's was to say "Bobby Charlton". Unlike Beckham, Charlton's reputation was based on unparalleled skill not on lifestyle. This is not to dump on Beckham as a player; his right foot is indeed an instrument of torture to his teams' foes. Charlton could do the same with both feet.

The first topic - how to measure skills other than goalscoring - I will defer for a longer treatment, except to note that there's a strong case that Charlton was not England's best ever player. Stanley Matthews likely should receive that accolade. Yet he scored very few goals. If they had kept assists during his truly astonishing career - he played until he was 45 and came out of retirement after he was 50 to lead Stoke back to the First Division - he would have amassed a huge number. Yet even that would not capture what apparently enthralled the crowds. Rather it was his pure skill - at "dribbling" and plying his center forwards' with crosses - that set him apart.

Leaving aside all of the issues of how statistical measures can represent sporting achievement, the "raw" numbers on soccer certainly present a problem for anyone trying to compare the degree to which Pele could be said to be "better" than possible rivals with Bradman's astonishing edge over all other Test batsmen (avg of 100 vs 60 for nearest rival). The era-adjusted numbers establish support for the consensus view of Pele but his edge in goalscoring is only about 10%. Pele was not only a goalscorer, of course, especially towards the end of his career, but some great players were never at any point primarily goalscorers (e.g.Beckenbauer, Moore). Absent some method of measuring the contribution of non-goalscorers, scoring goals is just about all that's available in football and, as far as it goes, this seems to confirm the singularity of "the Don's" achievements.

Interesting, no doubt, but what does it have to do with Bradman?

Carrying on, the leading scorers are:Puskas-Hungary(last cap 1956)- 84 goals in 89 games;Pele-Brazil(1971)-77(91);Koscis-Hungary(1956)-75(68);Muller-Germany(1974)-68(62); and Batistuta - Argentina(current)-56(78). To correct for differences in eras, I grouped the 86 players (with some restrictions -more later) who have scored 30 goals or more into five eras;1950s, 1960s,1970s,1980s and 1990s on. The average goals per game of the scorers in these eras are, respectively; 0.73, 0.69, 0.59, 0.46 and 0.48. The average for the entire sample is 0.53. To correct for era, each scorers goals are multiplied by the ratio of their era's goals per game ratio to the overall (0.53). This results in the following. Puskas drops to 62 "equivalent goals", Pele to 69,Koscis to 55, Muller to 61 and Batistuta rises to 63, edging out Puskas for second spot. While there's much, much more to report from this and related analyses, I would think most fans (except those who follow the Argentinian closely) would be surprised to rank Batistuta so highly.

A start has been made on constructing an all-time international goalscorers ranking for football ("soccer" to N Americans). So far the analysis confirms Pele as the "era-corrected" leading scorer; but the number two slot is a bit of a surpise - Gabriel Batistuta.