structural:reformatting
World sport context

Wisden hailed Bradman as "the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games". Statistician Charles Davis analysed the statistics for several prominent sportsmen by comparing the number of standard deviations that they stand above the mean for their sport. The top performers in his selected sports are:

The statistics show that "no other athlete dominates an international sport to the extent that Bradman does cricket". In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of.392, while a basketball player would need to score an average of 43.0 points per game over their career. The respective records are.366 and 30.1.

When Bradman died, Time allocated a space in its "Milestones" column for an obituary:

...Australian icon considered by many to be the pre-eminent sportsman of all time...One of Australia's most beloved heroes, he was revered abroad as well. When Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, his first question to an Australian visitor was, "Is Sir Donald Bradman still alive?"