Bradman's feats best: Ponting

The Australia captain Ricky Ponting pays tribute to the feats of the cricket legend Donald Bradman.

SYDNEY // Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt may have lit up the Beijing Olympics with world record-breaking performances but the Australia captain Ricky Ponting feels they are not even close to matching the feats of the cricket legend Donald Bradman. Bradman dominated the game in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, scoring 6,996 runs from 52 Tests for Australia, giving him an average of 99.94. In his last match before retiring, against England at the Oval, he needed just four runs to have an average of 100 but was out for a duck.

Bradman died in 2001 aged 92, and the cricket world gathered to pay its respects to the batting great yesterday to mark the centenary of his birth. Ponting said: "He dominated cricket for 20 years from his debut in 1928 to his retirement 60 years ago this month and if he had not lost eight years of his career to World War II his figures would no doubt be better still. At every Olympics plenty of records are broken. Bradman remains unassailable. Of the 2,519 batsmen who have taken the crease in 131 years of Test cricket, Bradman stands alone and untouched.

"There are thousands of kids in every generation who grow up in Australia wanting to scale the heights of the greatest cricketer who ever lived." Ponting, whose average in Test matches is 58.37, laughed off comparisons with Bradman, calling it "amusing". "There's no need to even look at the record books to know there is no comparison," he added. The International Cricket Council (ICC) hailed Don Bradman as "a byword for brilliance". "No name in cricket conjures up such widespread awe and respect as that of Sir Donald Bradman," the ICC president David Morgan said from the organisation's headquarters in Dubai. "Even people with just a passing knowledge of the game or in countries where he never played will invariably recognise the name Bradman as a byword for brilliance."

* Agencies