Bradman’s 18 minutes of carnage

The sport of cricket is blessed to have seen one of the greatest athletes of all time in its arena in the name of Sir Donald Bradman. The more i read about this legend the more i get astonished by his achievements. Bradman has not only defined batsmanship but has set such high standards that his name could replace the word ‘pinnacle’ in the cricket dictionary. 

The records created by Bradman are very hard to break for any modern day cricketer even though the playing conditions nowadays are getting more batsmen friendly then they were around two decades ago. Some of his records can be considered invincible like his average or his rate of scoring test centuries (29 hundreds in just 52 tests) although, i do believe in the cliché “nothing is impossible”, but, its expecting too much from a player to have a career like Bradman’s especially, in this period where excessive cricket is being played.

Bradman had a transmission gear in his batting arsenal which he was willing to change whenever the situation demanded.  Bradman showed how his style of play could be truly ruthless and murderous for his opposition when he scored more than 300 runs in a single day of a test match. Another such incident of his apocalypse was witnessed by the people of Blue Mountain town in Australia in the year 1931. The match was played between Blackheath and Lithgow to commemorate the opening of a concrete pitch. Bradman during the course of his innings felt the need to go after the bowling and he said to his partner Wendell Bill that “I think I’ll have a go”. 

What was witnessed in the next 18 minutes after that resulted in awestruck admiration from the crowd, teammates and his opponents. He went on to score 100 runs in the span of just three over’s. It was an onslaught on the bowlers Bill Black and Horrie baker who gave away 62 runs in two over’s and 40 runs in one over respectively. In this innings Bradman scored 256 runs including 14 sixes and 29 fours. 

Although, it is also important to mention here that one over in Australia at that time meant eight legal deliveries but i think this won’t make much of a difference to his magnificent feat. Those three over’s recorded figures of 6,6,4,2,4,4,6,1 : 6,4,4,6,6,4,6,4 : 1,6,6,1,1,4,4,6. Even with the advent of T20 cricket his feat seems to be insurmountable, considering, the fastest 100 runs scored by a player in T20 cricket is 34 deliveries by Andrew Symmonds which in itself seems annihilating.