What Sachin Tendulkar has that Don Bradman didn’t

The advent of protection for batsmen from the late 1970s has been the biggest change to the game since the introduction of overarm bowling. It has altered profoundly the balance between bat and ball ... Nobody, bar Richards probably, is crazy enough to suggest that helmets should be banned. Nobody wants to see people dying for their sport. But to suggest that Tendulkar — or, indeed, any modern, armoured or, to use Richards’s phrase, “pampered” player — is the best ever is demeaning to those former greats who stood at the crease in the knowledge that their next ball could be their last.