Eddy Merckx?

My friend just got to ride with and photograph Eddy: http://pelotonmagazine.com/shutter/flanders-dispatch-day-one...

The guy's still going strong.

Wow... I'm envious! That's really cool.

Wayne Gretzky?

Cricket has a much, much bigger audience globally than Ice Hockey - there's a lot of Europeans, Australians, South Africans and Indians on HN who have likely never seen a hockey game :-)

It's also not so much of a team game - cricket statistics are much more likely to reveal an outlier than hockey, football, rugby or handball. It's possible to separate to a much greater extent a player from the quality of their team - if you put me and three other random guys on a basketball team with Michael Jordan, he would look a lot less impressive than he did with one of the greatest teams ever assembled! The same goes for Messi, Maradona, Gretzky, etc. Their talents need, and encourage to some extent, wonderful performances from their teammates to make passes, runs, tackles, interceptions, etc.

The only effect that a similar substitution would have on Bradman would be that he'd need to concentrate on 4s and 6s and keeping the rest of us 'in' long enough. If you wanted to sub in a North American sportsman as an outlier, it would need to be a baseball player, I guess :-)

Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with. While his feat is impressive, it is I'm guessing widely unknown. Perhaps Jordan, Ali, Gretzky, Babe Ruth would seem more appropriate.

For those not too familiar with cricket, that "average" isn't like a batting average in baseball. While incredibly impressive, it is not equivalent to getting a hit 100% of the time.

As for impressive feats above and beyond, Babe Ruth comes to mind. He hit more home runs in a season than many entire teams did at the time.

that's pretty american-centric. as an indian i'd say ali was truly world-famous, jordan is well known to my generation due to nba catching on in the 80s but i'm betting a large chunk of my parent's generation wouldn't know him, i only knew about babe ruth from reading american fiction, and i'd pretty much never heard of gretzky until last year.

so you have in fact heard of all of them. I think that pretty much proves my point, but I could also throw Pele in there for a non american that is far far more well known than Mr. Bradman.

It's obviously American centric because American media has been dominate at a global level for decades. That's the reason so many people know who eg Tiger Woods and Jordan are: American media made them famous to a degree far exceeding their accomplishments. The same holds true in music, movies, tv shows, and so on.

Jordan was widely regarded as one of the most famous people on earth for 15 or 20 years. His name is even more famous than his picture. I don't think there's much debate to be had about his global fame frankly. As basketball globalized rapidly in the late 80's / early 90's, it was his image intertwined with it, and it perfectly coincided with the rise of global media.

It's got more to do with the audience for the sport. Golf is played all over the world. On the other hand, a famous American Football quarterback could travel incognito in most of the world, because the international audience for American football is tiny by comparison.

> Someone that a higher percentage of people would be familiar with.

Actually, given India's huge population, I think it is more likely than not that more people are familiar with cricket than are familiar with baseball.

For example - http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/04/04/cricket-wor...

Babe Ruth? So by "a higher percentage of people" you mean "Americans and few others"

I suspect that Babe Ruth might actually be comparable. People that know a little bit about baseball know him. People that know a little bit about cricket know Bradman.

Ali and Jordan on the other hand are pretty much known by everyone. Pele would be another good example.

OP apparently isn't from the USA; I'd imagine in OP's cultural context the Bambino is less well known, baseball being a mostly North American sport.

Let's not forget we have an international readership here :-)

True, but I suspect the other three are more well known by far more people. If we want to go international, I'd put Pele out there before Mr. Bradman