Records are only records
Comparing great sportsmen of different eras is a parlour game that all sports fans have indulged in from time to time – and will do as long as sport remains a human pastime.
It’s sometimes held to be the case that statistics cannot lie, but then you have to check out which statistics you’re talking about because so many other factors also have to be taken into account if you’re going to take comparisons at all seriously.
Different eras have different prevailing conditions, or different qualities of track (in the case of athletics) … different equipment … even (as in the case of the javelin) different weights of ‘arrow’ and flight capability, simply because at one time the top exponents of the art were chucking the thing so far that they were potentially endangering not only competitors but spectators in the stands at the other end of the stadium.
Different standards of nutrition, different training theories, different ‘illegal substances’, different attitudes towards the relationship between work and play, different modes of transport, different means of communication – and, of course, different commercial considerations when it comes to the modern era of mass media and the internet.
“Who was the greatest?” is an ever-moving feast. You can begin with the issue of ‘entertainment factor’, or perhaps sheer meteor-like fleeting brilliance, or rather (if this be your thing) “Yes, but how many times did he/she actually win Wimbledon?” … after all, should – or does – length of time at the top come into the equation when comparing two or more greats, and if so, to what degree?
Furthermore, if you could have offered say Harold Abrahams the chance to experience the travel and revenue-generating opportunities, never mind the celebrity profile, that the recently-retired Usain Bolt enjoyed between 2008 and 2017 as a 100 metre sprint exponent, would he have jumped at it … or, alternatively, might he have responded “No thanks” and chosen to remain with the conditions he grew up with and knew during his heyday in the early 1920s?
We shall never know.
In that context, I’d hazard a guess, it would be far more likely that – if the boot was on the other foot and the Jamaican superstar was given the binary option of being himself either in the 21st Century or, alternatively, whisked back in time to be an Olympian a hundred or so years ago, Mr Bolt would need no more than the time it took for the starter’s gun to go off to decide he’d rather be himself as he was/is.
This week the world of English cricket has been celebrating the extraordinary feat of thirty-five year old pace/swing bowler Jimmy Anderson who, in the current Test match at Lords against the West Indies, has taken his 500th Test wicket in his 129th Test match at an average of 27.74.
Being in my seventh decade, I can still recall with some degree of clarity the 15th of August 1964 when Yorkshire fast bowler ‘Fiery’ Fred Trueman had Neil Hawke caught by Colin Cowdrey in the slips in the fifth Test between England and Australia to become the first man in history to take 300 Test wickets.
I also remember with some affection the interview that Trueman gave afterwards to the BBC. Asked whether he thought anyone would ever beat his record, he replied with feeling “I don’t know, but I do know one thing – if anyone does, he’ll feel bloody tired!”
Fred Trueman finished his Test career – coincidentally at the age of thirty-five, the same age as Jimmy Anderson is now – on 67 Tests and a total of 307 wickets (at an average of 21.57).
Had Anderson been playing cricket fifty years ago, on the type of pitches groundsmen prepared in those days, plying his trade on the county circuit and then on those long overseas international tours, would he have got anywhere near Trueman’s record Test haul of wickets?
Indeed, would Trueman have got anywhere near Anderson’s tally of 501 (at the latest count) if he’d been playing in the 21st Century?
We shall l ever know. And I suppose in one sense it doesn’t matter anyway.
