Talk:Don Bradman/Archive 4

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Some pre FAC comments to deal with

With thanks to Tony1. Cross-posted from my talk page. --Dweller (talk) 09:04, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• I think you'll be criticised at FAC for puffery in the first para. The third and fourth sentences are just a string of four of them, only one of which is quite uncontestable (the second), IMO. The fourth, harking to Ref 3, is based on questionable methodology: this use of standard deviations is unusual, and I'm concerned at how the mean (better than average in this context) has been calculated—was the scope equivalent for all of those sports? Worried. The adulation continues with less intensity during the third and fourth paras. The lead does risk reducing the authority of the article in this way. Can't some of these adulatory reports/opinions be integrated into the main text so that the lead can be presented in a more "factual" tone?

OK. This was a chunky issue, so I left it to last. The third and fourth sentences do very different jobs. We've established in sentence one his position as a great cricketer. However, sentence three establishes that he transcended cricket to become a great Australian hero which is a separate and highly notable claim. Sentence three then goes beyond that and remarks on his international status. I think all of these cited claims are notable, separate and unarguable. Sentence four is sensational and cannot possibly be regarded as redundant. The comment about Ref 3 gives me pause for thought. It would be easy to deal with by removing the first sentence in the ref. I think this loses something, as someone skimming the article might want elucidation to the point of one sentence but not reading the whole section. As such, I'm unsure and will solicit the views of others at WT:CRIC, as well as some other FAC regulars. Moving on to parags three and four - I've looked long and hard at the material there. I think the Robertson Glasgow comment is arguably puffery in terms of the needs of the Lead. All the other comments and claims add to a zero base knowledge of his actions (he drew crowds etc) but the writer's opinion of how a small group of English cricketers felt about him can be moved to the main body. NB there are some negative comments in there, too! --Dweller (talk) 09:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I've commented on the statistical stuff below.

• "Australian" needs linking only on its first occurrence, don't you think?

Outside of the infobox, each wikilinked instance leads to a different end point, depending on context --Dweller (talk) 09:15, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• "A controversial set of tactics, known as Bodyline, was specifically devised by the England team to curb his batting brilliance." The location might be OK, but it does seem a little arbitrary, stuck at the end of Para 2. Can it possibly be embedded in Para 3?

Yes, I'll do that. --Dweller (talk) 09:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

• Odd spacing of the em dash after "recognised". Is it my browser?

I think so. --Dweller (talk) 09:53, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• "Eighteen", but "12".

This is a thorny one often a problem in cricket articles where lots of numbers are used. Generally, we try to hold to MOS one to ten, then 11 onwards, but we won't mix type, so "eighteen and one" in this instance. --Dweller (talk) 09:53, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• "not-out" might be hyphenated for the uninitiated.

As it's normally not hyphenated, and given the "uninitiated" comment I assume you were correctly pointing out that the 1st instance was not wikilinked. Now done. --Dweller (talk) 10:07, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• Bradman and bat image: Concerned at why this text is on the info page if the copyright has expired: "Apart from any use permitted by the Copyright Act (including fair dealing) or by the licence contained in the following paragraph, this material may not be downloaded, printed, emailed, stored in cache or otherwise reproduced without the written permission from the State Library of New South Wales." Who cares? Or does it create an issue? Seems contradictory.

 Not doneThis is beyond my area of expertise and I've left a message for a user experienced in dealing with Australian image copyright issues, asking for help. --Dweller (talk) 11:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

 Confirmed This photo was taken pre 1955 in Aus territory so it is PD. Many state libraries and even the national archive, IIRC use the "this is ours" on all pictures irrespective of this (incorrectly). Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:22, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

• "So-honoured"—no hyphen.

I think it does need a hyphen, to differentiate "honoured in this way" from "honoured to this extent" (so being one of the most ambiguous words in our lexicon!) but will reword to avoid the ambiguity. --Dweller (talk) 09:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• "Note the position of Bradman's left foot in relation to the stumps, an example of how he "used the crease" when batting." MOS no-no. See "Usage". Try "The position of Bradman's left foot in relation to the stumps is an example of how he "used the crease" when batting."

Good stuff. --Dweller (talk) 10:18, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• Possibly a bit choppy in the paragraphing in a few places—unsure how easy it is to fix; e.g., "Later years and legacy".

I'll see if I can fix this up. --Dweller (talk) 09:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

• I suppose the red stats graph can't be positioned further up? Lots of white space there, which highlights the listiness at the end. Don't know. The olive histogram ... they all look the same on that horizontal scale next to DB. Funny since they do go from 61 to 54. Does it need to be a figure?

The placement is consistent with other cricket FAs which is because it is really most useful when considering the man's career, so I'm content on that. The olive bars do vary on my screen, but really the point the chart is making is how Bradman stands head and shoulders above the others, making their various (outstanding) careers look run of the mill. I'm content with it. --Dweller (talk) 10:18, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• Why are words such as "influenza" linked? We do speak English. I see others—"fraud", embezzlement", "thumb?!" "Fracture" ... well, that's borderline. I'd nip and tuck the linking so that the valuable ones you'd like readers to follow up are not diluted by bright-blue splash. BTW, the date-autolemon is no longer mandatory, and Australian/British formatting would be quite acceptable (but some article authors still insist on the auto).

Good comment - I'll address the ones I spot --Dweller (talk) 09:15, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• "5–Test series"—En dash? Why?

Amended to nbsp --Dweller (talk) 11:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

World Sport Context

Tony1 raises the issue of the statistical claims. There is no doubt that Bradman's batting average, and its distance above anyone else's, are remarkable and need to be emphasised. However, I too am worried about the comparisons with other sports. The standard deviation comparison isn't a fair comparison unless you know the distributions of the statistics (for example, that they're all Normal). And in some cases it's not even clear how to construct the statistic (what is the average number of major victories for a golfer?). And anyway, what's the right statistic to choose? I bet Cal Ripken's record of 2632 consecutive MLB games rates higher on this scale.

I'd like to suggest some edits which I think can deal with this while being mathematically rigorous. I'm afraid the World Sport Context section needs to be substantially pared down to something like this:

Wisden hailed Bradman as, "the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games". Statistician Charles Davis analysed the statistics for several prominent sportsmen by comparing the number of standard deviations that they stand above the mean for their sport, and, in the words of Brett Hutchins, argued that "no other athlete dominates an international sport to the extent that Bradman does cricket". When Bradman died, TIME magazine [etc.]

By the way, I haven't checked the references here. Also, is it Davis or Hutchins who made the final comment? — it's very unclear as it stands.

As for the last sentence of the first paragraph, I would moderate it to read "Some authors have claimed that his career Test batting average of 99.94 is statistically the greatest performance in any major sport" and also drop the first sentence of footnote 3.

Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:27, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Taking the issues in reverse order, I like the suggested amend to the Lead and will implement it. --Dweller (talk) 10:58, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

---

Notes from a non-sportsman who has only watched one game of cricket in his life:

Can any player in a team sport dominate that sport to the extent that an individual player can in an individual sport? If you really want to see some examples of dominance in sports, try motor racing. Michael Schumaker, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Richard Petty immediately spring to mind.

Georgejdorner (talk) 20:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Well it means in comparison to other individual units in the relevant sport, eg Pele, etc. Secondly As far Schumacher goes, F1 is 80% down to the car and not the driver YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 02:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

---

Not to give you grief, Yellow Monkey, but the reasons why Schumaker or any other individual dominates an individual sport are irrelevant. I am pointing out that the claim is being made in this article that 9% of the members on the team (another way of saying, one player) can dominate an entire team sport, as opposed to 100% of the players (again, one player) influencing the results of an individual sport. It's obviously a bogus statement. If it were amended to state that Bradman dominated the sport of cricket, it stands a change of certitude. If it were amended to say Bradman dominated a major team sport like no other, you will probably catch flak over the definition of "major team sports". However, it defies logic to assert that a team player can have a greater effect on a team sport than a solo player in an individual sport.

Georgejdorner (talk) 16:46, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

My 2c on lead

On thinking about it, I'd remove sentence 3 altogether from para one. It doesn't really add anything to the article. I think sentence one of para 3 should go in para 1, along with mention of batting average being by far and above any other cricketer and leave it at that. As far as the magnitude of his achievements across other sports, I think they could be disputed - eg Walter Lindrum's achievements in billiards is one that comes to mind.

(i.e. summary - rem sentence 3 & 4 of para 1 - slot in setence 1 of para 3, plus batting average, into para 1 before later life bit) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree, other than I do like "Bradman is one of Australia's most popular sporting heroes&nbsp..." but that is referenced below in the last sentence of the second para. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 12:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Casliber please leave the original research out of it. It is amazing how many armchair statisticians on wikipedia try and criticise Davis' outcome without any appreciation of statistics. Have you worked out the SD of billiards champions number of wins? If not then why bother bringing it up? There are/were far fewer professional billiards players than cricketers and combined with the tendancy for the sport to be dominated by one player in the same way as snooker (compare Joe Davis in Lindrum's timeframe, or Steve Davis or Stephen Hendry in the modern era) the SD's will be far wider than in cricket. In any case unless a critique of Davis' work has been published and thus can be cited his methodology stands. The very fact that a statistician went as far as writing a book on the subject and publishing it is notable. The claim has been made. Whether it is right or wrong is no business of ours, but I can guarantee you if his work was seriously flawed it would not have been published. --LiamE (talk) 14:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing OR about mentioning Lindrum WRT records in a particular sport. I am aware of Bradman's stature and how vast the gulf is between his and other averages, and have no comment on the quality of the research. I was thinking of ways to make the intro look less 'puffy' and allowing the facts to speak for themselves, and was suggesting how I might do it on the talk page. In any case, if you want to keep it, replace the nebulous 'some authors' with the author (and book) name. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:22, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

"I think they could be disputed - eg Walter Lindrum's achievements in billiards is one that comes to mind" is the definition of OR. Either it has been disputed or it hasn't. In this case the latter is true so "I think they could be disputed" is OR. --LiamE (talk) 16:32, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Chaps, I welcome all of your thoughts as I try to ascertain consensus. I don't think anyone's arguing we should remove Davis' analysis from the article, we're assessing its role in the Lead (and, as an adjunct, its prominence in the article). --Dweller (talk) 14:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, whatever its worth, dosen't Some authors have claimed sound too clunky for the lead section?Abeer.ag (talk) 17:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Moving this on

I'm trying to ascertain the consensus here, but struggling a little. I'll create two subsections for what I think are the remaining issues before I head off to FAC. --Dweller (talk) 11:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Lead "puffery"

I'm certainly prepared to remove the "international reputation" bit and I think the Australian hero seems to have some duplication. I'll merge them as well. No doubt not everyone will be 100% happy, but please let me know if you think I've got this about right. --Dweller (talk) 11:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

World context in Lead

Appropriately worded, this needs to be there as it's a remarkable claim from RS. --Dweller (talk) 11:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Davis section

I think that it's right that this be pruned a little, but I do think that readers will find useful the conclusions about how other sportsmen would have to have performed for Bradmanesque dominance. Again, let me know how you think I've done. --Dweller (talk) 11:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, its worth mentioning Michael Jordan's and Ty Cobb's names, just to show how superior Bradman was to them as per DavisAbeer.ag (talk) 18:50, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

As I've retained the chart, their names are still there. --Dweller (talk) 18:53, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

This table has a wrong number

		Batting				Bowling
Opposition	Matches	Runs	Average	High Score	100 / 50	Runs	Wickets	Average	Best (Inns)
England	37	5028	89.78	334	19/12	51	1	51.00	1/23
India	5	715	178.75	201	4/1	4	0	–	–
South Africa	5	806	201.50	299*	4/0	2	0	–	–
West Indies	55	447	74.50	223	2/0	15	1	15.00	1/8
Overall	52	6996	99.94	334	29/13	72	2	36.00	1/8

Not difficult to spot! While I'm at it, I think there should be a number of innings column in the batting averages aswell almost-instinct 23:14, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Now fixed. I am not so sure about including the innings column. It adds more complication to the table and still soesn't allow the reader to see transparently how the average was calculated. We could include not outs as well, but that would add even more complication. However if consensus is to include innings, I wouldn't be concerned. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 23:40, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

References

My tuppence worth: I thoroughly agree that each fact cited should be given an individual reference. Otherwise the reader doesn't know if that particular piece of information is uncited. The logical conclusion to partial removal would be to get rid of inline citations completely- and that's just not going to happen! almost-instinct 14:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Bibliography

I can't access the Wisden Almanac through the link http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/. It simply leads to a page where you can order the 2006 edition. Perhaps this link :http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/current/story/almanack/ should be used instead.Abeer.ag (talk) 07:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

TYhat's odd. For me, the first link redirects to the second. But it certainly can;t hurt to use the second. JH (talk page) 08:35, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Administration and Legacy

Bradman should also be acknowledged for his couragous decision to ban Australian cricket teams from touring South Africa in the 1970s, "until they choose a team on a non racist basis."

This reflected his considerable "quest for the truth" approach to public administration and his natural resistance to protest and politics in sport.

Nelson Mandella held Bradman as a sporting hero long before his internment. Bradmans subsequent actions heightened the admiration.

Biography by Roland Perry —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.237.214.175 (talk) 12:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a good point. We already mention Mandela's question on his release, regarding Bradman's status. I'll see if I can find anything. --Dweller (talk) 15:59, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

There's this article from cricinfo, I'm happy to let someone who is more familiar with the Bradman article to slot it in somewhere. Nev1 (talk) 00:29, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Bradman didn't "ban Australian cricket teams from touring South Africa in the 1970s" (Aus toured SA in early 1970); he recommended to the Australian board that the 1971-72 series be cancelled after taking advice from the prime ministers of Aus and SA. On a personal level, he wanted the tour to go ahead, but recognised that, after witnessing riots at a SA-Aus rugby test at the SCG, that the tour was not going to work. The cricinfo article is hagiographic and abscribes his motives toward SA as altruistic when, in fact, they were merely expedient. 59.101.246.214 (talk) 01:38, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Lead/"Major Sport"

Not to denigrate the sport of cricket or take away from Sir Donald's unarguable legacy, but is there some objective, notable definition of what constitutes a "major sport"? The presence of this phrase in the lead begs the question. Skyraider (talk) 02:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Good luck with that. It would come down to the method of classification, and getting consensus on that would be hugely challenging. What criteria would we use? We can't use number of involved countries because that would move Netball ahead of American football, which is nonsensical. It can't be based on dollar amounts because that would eliminate US college basketball, which is clearly a major sport (and distinct to NBA basketball) in that country.

Fortunately for this article the statement is not contentious, as cricket is clearly a "major international sport", regardless of the definition used. But I could see it getting very ugly when discussing less prominent sports, such as Judo, Handball, Australian Rules Football, etc. Manning (talk) 02:16, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

You'd better come up with a definition of "prominent" as well, because there are millions of Victorians (I'm not one of them, I hasten to add) for whom AFL is not just prominent, but is almost the only sport worth talking about at all. OK, they do grudgingly go along to the Boxing Day Test at the MCG for lack of anything else to do; and they did condescend to hold the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games here - but these are just sideshows to the main event. AFL gets top billing in the sports section of many news programs down here 365 days a year, even though the season is only from March-September. -- JackofOz (talk) 04:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

We don't need to worry about it, as it's Davis (the statistician) who has the problem. As ever, we're just reporting on RS. --Dweller (talk) 06:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

100 Birthday

Congratulations to all who have worked on the article and here's to a hundred years of Bradman. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 14:15, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Yup, nice work everyone! Especially getting in on the main page on this 100th was a nice thing. Sigh... 4 more runs... Lucifer (Talk) 18:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, from me too. Good job all round. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:22, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Bush Cricket

What in the world is "bush cricket" as mentioned in the article summary? The wikilink in the text goes to the bush, which is no help. There is an article Bush Cricket, but it's an insect.... Mark Shaw (talk) 21:37, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Bush cricket is cricket that is played in the bush, i.e. rural Australia. You are right about the link not helping much as it does not explain the Australian usage of the term. Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 22:58, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I think I've resolved this issue - I updated The Bush to reflect Australian usage of the term, and gave a brief explanation of the term "Bush Cricket". Manning (talk) 02:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Good job. --Dweller (talk) 11:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Any mention of Bradman and bush cricket should also take account of the points raised in the conclusion of Hutchins' book, which directly addresses the topic. John Dalton (talk) 03:52, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Those are some extraordinary words (I had to scroll up). What the heck has sexism and racism got to do with it? And it's undeniable that Bradman began his life and career in hicksville. No-one, least of all us, is asserting that he spent the remaining years of his life living there... --Dweller (talk) 11:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Turf Wicket needs correction to turf pitch — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.212.22 (talk) 11:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Youth and early career

I strenuously doubt that George Bradman was "nee" anything, as it is the feminine form of "born"; I'll avoid making any comments about Australian men. Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 21:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The error occurred when the sentence was messed about with by a vandal, fixed by someone ( presumably a gentleman) who switched the order of their names and then when I did a further fix I missed the error that had crept in. Thanks to whoever has now sorted this out! --Dweller (talk) 10:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)