In the 20th Century Australians
have been able to boast, with great justification
over three treasures renowned across the globe:
"Our 'arbour, our bridge, and our Bradman."
When a 19-year-old boy from Bowral stepped onto
the world stage in 1929, cricket changed forever
and gained an icon whose figure has towered
across continents for 70 years.
A slightly built youngster, Bradman possessed
a superb eye, and honed his skill further by
bouncing a golf-ball off a rain-water tank near
his home using a stump for a bat. In the bush
outside his small town, he would spend hours
throwing down a single stump, fetching the ball
or stone if he missed and having another shy.
He moved swiftly through grade cricket, and
made his debut for New South Wales at 18. Test
cricket was just a year away, but this seemed
inevitable as he carved up Australia's attacks.
Bradman's run-scoring feats early in his career
made him a national celebrity - a sporting goods
firm for whom he worked in Sydney soon had his
likeness on their advertisements - but it was
the astonishing consistency of his batting that
began to suggest that the young man with the
self-deprecating smile was more than another
talented flash in the pan.
A stellar start in Tests, with two centuries
against England in 1929, cemented his place
in a young Australian team. But the floodgates
were only just opening. His eleventh innings,
at Lord's in 1930, produced 254 runs, while
two innings later, at Leeds, he made a then
record 334. The legend had begun.
Bradman's method was simple if unconventional.
Almost entirely uncoached, he settled on a technique
that he claimed helped him to avoid fatal outside
edges. The bat was held with the face pointing
almost to square leg, and it came down to meet
the ball from somewhere near point. The closed
face required sublime timing, but in return
it made Bradman utterly merciless off his pads,
and prevented him from following balls outside
the off-stump.
There were more attractive batsmen that Bradman
- Bill Ponsford, and the young Neil Harvey -
but none could score with such apparent disdain
for the skill of the bowler. Bradman later attributed
much of his success to the speed with which
he scored his runs: his 452* for New South Wales
against Queensland - still the highest score
made in Australia - took just 377 minutes, while
in 1931 in a minor match against the touring
South Africans he blasted a century off 22 balls.
309 of his 334 at Leeds were made in a single
day.
And yet he never slogged; Bradman's talent was
to hit the ball along the ground, often. He
was an excellent hooker and puller, keeping
the ball down as he tumbled out of the shot
into a quick run. But his play on either side
of the wicket was his trademark. Nobody could
cut like Bradman, as he sent ball after ball
through gully or past point.
As Bradman's celebrity grew, so too did his
value to Australia. In the harsh years of the
Depression, he provided his countrymen with
a sporting hero they could admire both on and
off the field. He did not drink or smoke, and
eschewed the sometimes frantic socialising of
his colleagues. In the following economic recovery,
he helped debunk the image of Australians as
crude country bumpkins: at stylish functions
in English longrooms and hotels, he spoke with
clarity and a simple charm that made him one
of his country's best ambassadors.
The war obliterated what would have been the
prime of the great batsman, and at the same
time his health went into decline due to fibrositis.
He was discharged from the army before the end
of hostilities, but his return to the cricket
field was a glorious affair: his first Test
innings for eight years produced 187 against
England at Brisbane, while his next outing seemed
to show his intent to make up for lost time,
as he made 234 at Sydney.
In 1948 he played his last series, retaining
the Ashes with a 4-0 win in England, and English
crowds queued up to see the great man. The tour
was a whirlwind of fan mail and functions for
Bradman, then 40 years old, and yet he still
managed to score two centuries. In his last
innings, at the Oval, he was given a standing
ovation as he walked out to bat. The innings
was infamously short, legspinner Eric Hollies
bowling him for a duck, and Bradman was never
able to deny the legend that his eyes were full
of tears as he took guard. But there is no doubt
about the ovation he received on his way off
the turf.
After retiring, Bradman became the first Australian
cricketer to be knighted, and spent the next
two decades administering cricket, being both
president of the South Australian Cricket Association
and a long-time convenor and chairman of the
national selection panel.
Bradman and his beloved wife Jessie retired
to Adelaide and lived a reclusive life out of
the public eye.
Sir Donald Bradman, Australian icon and international
sporting treasure, passed away peacefully in
his sleep on 25 February 2001 at the age of
92.
