by Evan Whitton by Evan
Whitton, author of Serial Liars: How Lawyers
Get the Money (Lulu 2005). (Sydney Sun-Herald
| October 30, 1994 )
Bill O'Reilly, who was also
reporting the match for The Sydney Morning Herald,
may have cast his mind back to 1926 and that
day at Bowral which was a prelude to Bradman's
astonishing career. Selby Jeffrey, hero of Gallipoli,
it may be recalled, twice missed Bradman off
O'Reilly before he had scored, once through
lighting his Kapp and Peterson pipe and once
in a cloud of smoke; Bradman went on to make
234. Now, at the end of his career, Bradman
was again dropped in the slips.
'Twice,' Batchelor wrote,
'snicks in slips played about Crapp like forked
lightning - the second offering a catch which
any slip of moderate experience should have
caught at his ease.'
Bradman was 22 and 30 when
Crapp missed him. Batchelor wrote: 'The hinge
of this last day's play came when, with the
bowling on top and the wicket helpful, Evans
failed to stump Morris and Crapp abjectly dropped a sub-human
Bradman. From that moment the game was, in
a phrase of the brave days of old - when beer
was tenpence a schooner and Yabba reigned
on the Hill - in the bag.'
Morris and Bradman hit 301
in 217 minutes (83 an hour) for the second
wicket. Morris was out for 182 with the score
at 358; Miller went at 396. Bradman may not
have much that was useful to tell Harvey about batting, but
he was happy to arrange for him to hit the
winning run. Bradman's 173 n.o. (29 fours)
took 255 minutes. It was his 29th and last
century in Tests.
In the Warwickshire match,
Eric Hollies judged that Bradman could not
pick his wrong-un (an off break with a leg
break action), and did not bowl it to him
in the second innings in case he was picked
for the fifth Test. When he was chosen, Hollies
told Tom Dollery: 'I know I can bowl him with
it and I'll give it to him second ball at
the Oval.'
England collapsed in the fifth
Test for 52 (Lindwall 6 for 20 off 16.1 overs).
Australia was 1 for 117 when Bradman came
in, to a standing ovation, at 5.50 pm on Saturday
14 August. He needed four runs to give him
a total of 7000 runs in Test matches at an
average of 100. If Australia had needed 200
from him to win the series, there is little
doubt he would have got it, but the series
was decided and the match was hardly in doubt.
It will be recalled that the
last time an opposing captain had called for
three cheers for Bradman was in 1930 when
L.P. O'Connor asked the Queensland chaps to
give him the accolade after he broke the world
record of 437. Now Yardley said to his chaps:
'We'll give him three cheers when he gets
on the square.' He turned to Hollies and said:
'But that's all we'll give him - then bowl
him out.' Bedser, a few yards away, saw that
Bradman, supposedly a man of steel, was deeply
moved by the cheers from the England team.
Hollies was not that great
a bowler, at least not in Australia. Tommy
Allen had spun out Gubby Allen's MCC team
in 1936 and was in sedate middle age in 1950
when he turned out for Queensland Country
against the MCC in Toowoomba. He twice contemptuously
struck Hollies high out of the Athletic Oval;
the elderly white-stockinged ladies playing
croquet next door must have thought it was
raining cricket balls.
In 1948, coming round the
wicket, Hollies bowled a leg break; Bradman
hesitantly played it to silly mid-off. The
next was the wrong-un. Bradman, again hesitantly,
played forward, but not far enough to smother
the spin, and it took his off bail. He later
said it was a 'great exaggeration' to suggest
that tears obscured his vision. He walked
off to another standing ovation. Disgusted,
Hollies said to Jack Young (b. 1912): 'Best
------- ball I've bowled all season, and they're
clapping him!'
An England team was in Australia
46 years later. Their quality provoked a Bradman
story, no doubt apocryphal, related by Bob
Cronin, Editor-in-Chief of The West Australian.
Asked what average he thought he might achieve
against them, Bradman settled for 67. Surprise;
were their bowlers were so much better than
in his day, when his average was nearly 100?
'Hang on,' he replied, 'I
am 86.'
