Column

Two days from now, Barack Obama takes over as president of the United States of America. There are countless reasons I can think of why even these two days are two too many for George W Bush’s presidency to continue, but that would be labouring the point. Suffice to say that he leaves this planet in one of the most anxiety-driven situations in human history. His successor has his task cut out.

The final verdict on any era is prolonged to eternity by history, which is perennially being revised and re-revised. Bush’s supporters would argue that it was just an accident of fate that his presidency coincided with terrorism manifesting itself globally in such sinister manner; his detractors would contend that Bush himself may have been the trigger for such outrage to become so widespread.

Whatever the truth value of either position, it is fair to assume that his eight years in the Oval office were tumultuous. My own position is that it is good riddance to you know what, but I must also confess that I will miss George W: if only for his utterances, most of them shot from the lip, without too much ado, but always terrific value for humour quotient.

A cursory Google search for Bushisms yielded 584,000 entries, which works out to 73,000 per year (or more than 200 per day) of his presidency, which is a phenomenal number of bloopers and bloomers by any reckoning. All things considered, George W kept us entertained even as the world went from crisis to crisis, for which he must be acknowledged.

My favouriteBushism, which had been listed among the Top 10 by Time magazine some years ago,arrived on August 5, 2004 at a signing ceremony for a defence-spending bill when the president shared his views on what had been happening on the war on terror.

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful,” he said, “And so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
On second thought, was that prescience camouflaged as a Bushism I wonder.

The International Cricket Conference’s recently released list of great cricketers has predictably stirred a hornet’s nest in India. Sachin Tendulkar trailing in at number 26 has led to a jingoistic debunking of the ICC and its methods. I am all for a rebuttal of the ICC’s ranking because they provide no real index to the true greatness of any player.

But jingoism is equally misplaced, and suggests an immature understanding of the game.
Cricket, as much as it is driven by statistics, cannot be completely understood without subjective analyses. Who is to state unequivocally that Viv Richards was not the greatest batsman of the modern era though he averages less than Tendulkar, Ponting, Kallis and Sangakarra, for instance?

The only player exempt from such subjective scrutiny is Don Bradman. His Test career average of 99.94 is so unique in its numerical value that nothing else defines his genius better. By any calculation, by any reckoning, he would be the number one batsman the game has seen so far — or perhaps ever will.

Last week I came in possession of a marvellous book about the man, Remembering Bradman, written by an Aussie journalist Margaret Geddes, who interviewed more than 80 people who had touched Bradman’s life. The interviews were conducted after the Don’s death, and in its entirety paint a wonderfully intriguing picture of the man.

One of the interviews was with the English journalist Alex Bannister, who had ‘ghosted’ Bradman’s articles when he covered the 1953 tour of England for the Daily Mail.

Bannister recalls Bradman’s last Test in 1948: “And I remember when Don was bowled second ball by a googly (from Eric Hollies) which he snicked on his last Test innings in 1948, Jack (Fingleton, a former teammate of Bradman) in the press box roared with laughter.”

That even the great Don Bradman had detractors amongst those supposedly his mates shows the frailty of human relations. More significantly, that he should get a duck in his last Test innings, and not the mere four runs to finish with an average of 100, is to me a clear sign that even if you’re numero uno, you’re still mortal.