BEST BATSMAN EVER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 116, 12 November 1938, Page 25

BEST BATSMAN EVER

WARNER RANKS BRADMAN

In a letter to the London "Times," Sir Pelham Warner writes: "In his cricketing reminiscences Mr. Don Bradman quotes as evidence of a change in methods W. G. Grace's' alleged advice to young players: 4ln playing back never put your legs in front of the wicket.' Unfortunately, W.G. did not always write his own books, and in the wonderful series of photographs taken by the late Mr. G. W. Beldam for 'Great Batsmen: their methods at a glance,' W.G. is seen moving his right leg very decidedly in the action of playing back; and Mr. Beldam's 'camera, with its exposure of one thousandth of a second, did not lie!

"It is difficult indeed to compare the cricketers of different generations— conditions vary so—but W.G. created modern batting, and Mr. Bradman is the Grace of Australia. But if a comparison must be made surely Mr. Bradman ranks above any batsman of any time. No one has reduced rungetting to such a certainty, and I believe if you put a wicket down in Piccadilly he would make a hundred as he did at Leeds almost in the dark— at any rate in the worst light I have ever seen cricket played in a first-class match."