Rambling...3 Idiots, Tanjavur and Bradman

If you haven't yet, you should at least once in your life visit the Southern states of India from an architectural perspective even if you do not have an interest in monuments and construction. You will come back with a sense of awe and pride at the engineering-art that our people achieved centuries ago. You will be humbled by what our people from the past managed to get done with barefooted men as resources, just hammers and chisels as tools, and elephants as earth moving equipment. The mega-temples of Rameshwaram, Thanjavur, Mahabalipuram, Kanchipuram, Chidambaram, the Meenakshi Temple, the Ekambareswar Temple, the Konark Sun Temple, Khajuraho temples stand testimony to the exceptional advancement and uniqueness of our culture and thought in those times, in comparison to the rest of the world. The sheer massiveness of these ancient projects will impress you, and at the same time the art, intricacy and detail in it will stun you; more so if you imagine the context, the time period, the (lack) of technology and resources when it was done.

Flash forward into the present day UAE, USA, England, Malaysia, China, or Canada, to the modern day engineering achievements such as the Burj-Khalifa tower, the CN Tower, the Petronas twin towers, (ex)World Trade Center, Hoover Dam, colossal bridges spanning not just rivers but even portions of the sea, etc. Engineering marvels, all. Built with the amalgamation of advanced material technology, research, experience, architectural know-how, global knowledge bases, global resources and of course aided by computers, machinery and robotics. Amazing achievements that testify the advancement of today's world.

Question is, which is the greater achievement ? Is it that of the medieval architect, who, without any scope for simulation and testing, designed and built the magnificent Tanjavur's Brihadishwara temple in stark granite; a piece of colossal but intricate architecture that when built, was reputed to be a staggering 40 times bigger and 5 times taller than any other Temple of its time ? Or, is it that of the architect who designed and created the ultramodern Burj-Khalifa tower, the tallest man-made structure in the world, a paradigm of construction-engineering built with no expenses spared in technology, material  and global resources ? I do not have an answer because in both the examples above the common theme is that they are the highest achievements of the art and science of construction architecture in their own respective time.

They have a method for adjusting gross box office sales for inflation, in order to come up with the current day Box Office value for a movie from the past. Vidhu Vinod Chopra's blockbuster "3 Idiots" grossed Rs 400 Crores (Rs 4 Billion) worldwide with simultaneous release in dozens of countries and thousands of outlets over the world. Ramesh Sippy's mega-hit "Sholay" was released (just) in India 33 years ago, in about 500 outlets. Yet, it's gross collections, adjusted for inflation, are Rs 768 Crore (Rs. 7.68 Billion) in today's parlance. So which is the bigger movie? The real current day highest grosser (3 Idiots), or the one from the past (Sholay) which if adjusted for the current day would gross twice as much as today's biggest ?

I often see and even get into debates whether a great cricket player from the past is greater or better than one from the present. To me, there is really no answer to this in most cases because no matter how much one tries to compare, the 'subjective context' factor takes the comparison into the gray area.

Was Sunil Gavaskar a better opener than Len Hutton ? Was Shoaib Akhtar more aggressive than Wes Hall ? Was Jeff Thomson more fiery than Harold Larwood ? If these debates were presented in a courtroom,  I'm sure that the plaintiff and the defendant, both, would be able to make plausible and weighty arguments for themselves. One may say Gavaskar scored 13 test centuries against a certified best and most fearsome bowling side of his time ("his time" is the important clause), to which Len Hutton's defendant may propose that Len was by miles the best opener of his time who too did better than most  against the best of his time - the likes of Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller, Alan Davidson, Bill Johnston, Vinoo Mankad, Sonny Ramadhin, Alf Valentine - and that he had done nothing less in stature than this Gavaskar fellow of the 70's. Today's TV-dosed viewer may say that the thunderous Shoaib Akhtar gave away less than 10 runs for every Tendulkar, Waugh, Hayden and Ponting wicket in his entire career ! An oldie brought up on Radio broadcasts may point out that Wes Hall did the same to notable greats from his time like Neil Harvey, Vijay Manjrekar, Colin Cowdrey, Glenn Turner, Peter May, Dennis Amiss. Every player is mirrored by some other from another era in a contextually equalized frame of comparison. 

If only we had an 'inflation-adjustment' formula for cricket that allowed us to pick a Walter Hammond and a Rahul Dravid and pass them through a magic box of equations to find out which one would come out with a higher overall 'box office' rank, just like they do for movies :)

In 2007, Herschelle Gibbs went through 47 bats, in a total of 39 batted innings (14 in Tests, 21 in One-dayers, 4 in T20's). That is more than one bat per appearance at the crease, and nobody even noticed or thought much about it. In the 40's and 50's and 60's it was common for players to change bats only after a thousand or so runs were scored off it, which was about when the bat began to tatter at the edges and crack on the front face and became unusable in general. Modern day demigod Sachin Tendulkar has clocked over 30,000 international runs in 2 formats of cricket. If he were to use a bat just about 1/3rd the thickness and 2/3rd the weight (similar to what, say, Jack Hobbs or Dennis Compton used), would he still have had the punch to score those 30,000 runs, or would he have ended up with just, say, 18,000 ? Who knows. Conversely, if Bradman used the bats of the 2000's with computer contoured fat blades that have a sweet spot about the size of an entire thigh, on today's weather protected 'guaranteed-to-remain-dry' pitches, with helmets and all sorts of other body armor, against bowlers who were allowed only to bowl a maximum of just 1 bouncer every over, and with today's shorter boundaries, would he then have averaged 165 instead of 'just' 99.9 runs per innings ? Who knows. Point is, cricket is contextual Comparisons between players of different era's is a tough task.

Having said all of the above, let me pose a question about towering. About dominance. About being stupendously singular, across all parameters of time and achievement.

If there is an equivalent vintage player for almost every modern one, if there is indeed a counter avatar for each successful player in different era's, (Hall~Akhtar, Thomson~Larwood, Gavaskar~Hutton etc.), do we still have any cricketers who are exceptions to such comparison, who are so unique that they traverse all boundaries of time without an equal ?

I can think of a few, who were, and will probably remain untouchable forever. The most prominent among them is one whom I have never seen, or for that matter neither has even my father. But what this man did 3 generations prior to mine is still above and beyond anything that anyone has done to date.

Don Bradman is by far the most dominant cricketer in the history of Test cricket, in my opinion. Some even claim that this man is the single most dominant player of all time, across all sports…more dominant than Michael Jordan was to Basketball or Pele was to Soccer. Witnesses testified that this man was a freak of nature, his concentration and will were super-human, his desire to trump the bowlers was fanatic. I have not seen him play, I do not know if he was stylish, I do not know if he was a great human being or not. I only see what Bradman left behind on the cricket ground and I can only marvel at it, just like I see what the unknown architect of the magnificent Tanjavur Temple left behind….and as far as my limits of appreciation and understanding of cricket go, what Bradman built in the 30's and 40's with his thin bat still towers above and out of reach of any other cricketer that I have seen or read about before him or since him.

They say Sir Vivian Richards was one such player who always sought to wring the hearts out of the bowlers and squish them under his feet until they beat no more. In terms of ruthlessness (and actually ending up implementing the domination), Richards may well be a Bradman.

The other cricketer, who in my opinion, is unequaled for his feats across Cricket's time span is Muttiah Murulidharan. This is one bowler who is so far above the rest on almost any parameter, in any time context, under any circumstances, that one wonders if he will remain unique forever in the annals of Test cricket bowling. Here's a tidbit. The current-past decade of Test cricket (2000-2010) has been the best 10-year period for Test batsmen since the birth of cricket...conversely, the all-time worst decade for bowlers. Even in this most imbalanced state of equilibrium between bat and ball, Muruli has managed to take 565 Test wickets in just 84 Tests at 20 runs a piece, taking no less than 49 5-fors and 20 10-fors...something that is technically speaking better/bigger than Sir Richard Hadlee's entire career ! There is simply no comparison to how far up this man stands above the rest in his business, take a decade, or a career, or even the entire history of the game. This is exactly reminiscent of the way Bradman stands implausibly taller than the next best, during his time or whenever.