The Sands of Time

This week the great Sachin Tendulkar passed 14,000 Test runs, while amassing his 49th Test Century, both clear records. It caused some in the media to enter into a discussion about whether Tendulkar should be regarded as the equal, or perhaps a superior cricketer to Don Bradman.

This debate is now going on all over the world, and while also possibly feeding into a rivalry between Australia and India which borders on the unhealthy, it is getting heated with many cricket followers, despite having never seen Bradman play, having strong opinions about the subject.

I'm not going to really get into the Bradman v Tendulkar debate, other than to say that Bradman scored all of his runs on uncovered pitches, and played most of his Test Cricket against the second best side in the world, so add this to Bradman's amazing average, and Bradman still remains the best, and probably always will.

However, it feeds into a deeper trend about disparaging, even if only by the mere mention of another in serious comparison, of many sportspeople who came before.

Haydn Bunton made his name in Aussie Rules at the same time as Bradman was dominating attacks and scoring a century every third time he batted. He won 3 Brownlow Medals before turning 27, and then won three Sandover Medals in the WAFL.

His 122 Brownlow votes in 119 games stands alone as the most incredible feat in polling votes in our game, and is also the best candidate for a stat like Bradman's average of 99.94.

But Bunton died young (he's been dead for 55 years), and his legacy has been mostly forgotten.

In more recent times, the AFL awarded the Full Back position in the team of the VFL/AFL's first 100 seasons to a then current player, Stephen Silvagni, over Jack Regan, the Collingwood champion of the 1930s. Regan was known as the "Prince of Full Backs", and duelled with Bob Pratt at the height of his powers.

Silvagni's feats were fresh in our minds, while Regan's had been consigned to history, forgotten in the deep archived compactus of the game. Numerous other examples exist of such thinking.

William Goldman, the famous and successful screenwriter, co-authored a book on sports in 1987 with Mike Lupica titled "Wait Til Next Year". In a chapter by Goldman defending Wilt Chamberlain, he gave us this::

"The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories. It's gradual. It begins before you're aware that it's begun, and it ends with a terrible fall from grace. It really is a battle to the death."



He suggested the best players of that day, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, would also get the same treatment as many that had gone before, with pundits suggesting that "they couldn't play today".
 
While it is both honourable and right to celebrate the genius that is Sachin Tendulkar, we should never forget what those incredible sportspeople who achieved their greatness before the 24-7 sports blogosphere Twitter media circus became the norm.
 
As Halls of Fame become fat with the mere passing of time, we should also occassionally take time to recognise those that revolutionised the game with pioneering play, whether it be the way Bill Russell played defence, to how Polly Farmer handballed, to how Usain Bolt is changing sprinting by his mere size.
 
Without Bunton we would not have had Judd. Without Regan we would not have had Scarlett. And without Bradman, we would not have had Tendulkar. The best, often, is not the most recent in the memory. Let us remember that.