Recently we read some sections of the Sydney media describe Jarryd Hayne’s feats as an equivalent to the late, great, cricket legend, Sir Donald Bradman. I was embarrassed by this comparison.
Though I think Hayne is an outstanding athlete, he is just into the first half of his career and is by no mean consistent in his performance, nor achieved enough to be described ‘Bradmanesque’.
While it is hard to compare achievements on the league field with those on the cricket pitch, there are athletes throughout history that deserve comparison.
What has Hayne done to deserve a comparison with Bradman? Can Hayne’s try scoring records come near the cricket greats near perfect batting average?
What would that be or how can we compare it?
I do not know the answer but I imagine it would be fairly high: say a strike rate of one try per game over your entire league career, plus all the other accolades Bradman achieved on and off the field?
While I do not compare Hayne with Bradman, nor do I even think he comes close in a cross sporting comparison, there is one league athlete who I think deserves the title to sit with Bradman, and indeed, other great sportsman in their respective sports throughout history.
This player is Brian Bevan, who played right wing for most of his career.
I come to this conclusion because Bevan fits most, if not all the criteria if Bradman is considered a legend in cricket and sport in general.
To argue this I will need to make a comparative, albeit, a cross-sport analysis of Bevan’s achievements. Bevan fits the criteria as follows:
* Played 720 games from between the period 1945 to 1964.
* Amassed 796 tries during this period for an average of 1.10 tries per game.
* Played 18 representative games for Other Nationalities, British Empire XIII, Rugby League XIII scoring 29 tries.
* Member of the Australian and British Rugby League Hall of Fame.
* Named on the wing in Australia’s team of the century.
* Featured on a British stamp in 1995.
* Statue erected in Warrington, the English club he most represented (620 appearances).
* Topped the try scoring charts in the English Rugby League five times.
* Scored 72 tries in one season.
* In his career in England, Bevan scored a hat-trick of tries or more in a single game 100 times. Twice he scored seven tries in a single game for Warrington, which is still a club record.
* During his sixteen year career with Warrington he helped the club win the Challenge Cup twice, three Rugby League Championships, a Lancashire Cup and six Lancashire League titles.
The above facts make for a truly great sportsman, regardless of code or sport.
Despite never representing Australia, Bevan’s representative matches for Other Nationalities (foreign players playing in the English Rugby League that mostly included Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans, Scots, and Welsh) pitched him against the Australian, English, New Zealand and French national teams in places like Bordeaux, Marseille, Paris and London before respectable crowds.
This was at a time when the British and the French national teams were at their zenith of power. The antipodeans were also more than a match.
Additionally, the English rugby league competition was a powerful entity during Bevan’s era with clubs like Warrington, Wigan, Huddersfield, and Leeds attracting club averages of 30,000 plus and championship and challenge cup semi finals and finals drawing upwards of 60-100,000 plus.
Off the field, Bevan was a great family man, modest, quite about his achievements, and an accomplished piano player. Another reason why Bevan could stand proud along a equally modest and brilliant Don Bradman.
Probably the only thing Bevan does not have is a number of books written about him, but the books there are of him make for impressive reading.
Jarryd Hayne will most probably never get any where near being a Bradman for his sport. But to be fair, that is probably something 99.9 per cent of athletes in team sport will fail to achieve. Brian Bevan damn sure comes close though.
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