Bradman's team gets more brickbats
Paritosh Parasher
Cricket legend Donald Bradman's "Dream Team" continues
to receive more and more criticism.
Former Australian batsman and cricket commentator David Hookes has joined
former India captain Sunil Gavaskar, who was the first to raise doubts
about the team's authenticity.
Hookes has defended Bradman's virtues as a selector but he does not seem to
be comfortable with the Australian icon's biographer Roland Perry.
He has added fuel to the raging controversy saying it "must represent the
most unbalanced team in history" and that the "Dream Team" was not Bradman's
own but a product of Perry's imagination.
In a newspaper column, he has cast doubts about the selection of the "Dream
Team" and launched a scathing criticism on it. Perry's book, "Bradman's
Best", has become a runaway bestseller since its release in Sydney and
London.
"Too many anomalies and not enough facts; just the words of a journalist
who, in his own words, sniffed out a story and kept at Bradman until he
received the go-ahead," Hookes said.
Like Gavaskar and Hookes, Australian captain Steve Waugh is also not making
an overt effort to conceal his dissatisfaction about all of the "ins" or, in
other words, those who made it to the Bradman's World XI.
Waugh, who is recovering from a foot injury on Ashes tour in England, has
reportedly suspected the "Dream Team". His objection about the team
is over the inclusion of too many Australians.
His team mate and arguably world's best leg spinner, Shane Warne, has been
more generous in his comments from England.
"Sir Donald was the best batsman ever, so whatever he thinks is the best,
probably is the best ... but obviously ... it would have been very nice to
be in there," he has been quoted by Australian media as saying.
But Richard Mulvaney, the director of the Bradman Museum in Bowral near
Sydney, is trying to put to rest the doubts about the authenticity of the
Bradman team.
"There is no question about its bona fide. This team was given to Perry in a
letter written by Bradman in 1998-99," Mulvaney told an Indian newspaper.
But this authentication has failed to satisfy the doubting Thomases and
those who have found themselves or their icons not in the team.
The only active member of the XI, Sachin Tendulkar, has termed his inclusion
by Bradman as the "greatest thing to happen".
Gavaskar, the world's second highest run-getter, and Kapil Dev, the world's
number two wicket-taker, were among the list of 69 players short-listed by
Bradman, or "Don" as Australians prefer to call him.
Indo-Asian News Service
