Donald Bradman
Donald Bradman and the birth of a legend
J.G.W. Davies was a distinguished classical scholar who became the chief psychologist at the War Office during the Second World War, secretary of the Cambridge University appointments board, an executive director of the Bank of England and treasurer and president of MCC. He opened the batting for Kent, played rugby for Blackheath and was three times the British (and therefore world) champion at Rugby fives. Yet he was best known for none of these things because, in 1934 at Fenner's, he bowled Don Bradman with an off break for the first nought he had ever made in England.
It was but one small measure of the extraordinary fame of the batsman born in Cootamundra, New South Wales, 100 years ago today. No wonder another relatively obscure cricketer who once dismissed him, Bill Andrews, of Somerset, entitled his autobiography The Hand that Bowled Bradman. Both because of the time in which he lived and the prowess with which he played, the most influential Australian who ever lived reflected glory like no other sportsman. Defeating him was like coming from behind to beat Tiger Woods in the last round of the Open, or outpacing Usain Bolt over 200 metres.
If Kevin Pietersen, England's man of the moment, were to finish his Test career with an average of 56.57, it would be exceeded by only five England batsmen - Herbert Sutcliffe, Ken Barrington, Walter Hammond, Jack Hobbs and Len Hutton. Yet 56.57 was the average that in 1932-33 represented failure, embarrassment and defeat for Bradman, Test cricket's only true nonpareil.
Still the most famous of all Australians, the main facts about his performances are as a, b, c or amo, amas, amat to aficionados: the highest Australian score of 452 not out; that he scored a hundred every third time that he batted; the final average, only five below 100 in first-class cricket and 99.94 in Tests, and so on.
It is a strange fact that Bradman's phenomenal prowess is measured as much by his rare failures - the final, second-ball dismissal to Eric Hollies's googly at the Oval in 1948 and the relative decline against Harold Larwood and Bill Voce in the Bodyline series - as it is by the unprecedented domination of his first tour to England in 1930. As a 21-year-old, he scored a century in the first Test, a double century in the second, 334 in the third at Headingley (then the world-record Test score) and another double century in the fifth at the Oval.
Such brilliance and remorselessness spawned Douglas Jardine's ruthless strategy in the return series in Australia, the cricketing equivalent of the Royal Navy's determination to sink the Bismarck in 1941. But Bradman was merely scathed; never sunk. Such were his reactions, fitness, keenness, intelligence and deep determination, he would have been a champion in any era since, not least the present one. It is true that the need to change tempo for 50 and now for 20-overs cricket, against defensive fields and often on slower pitches, would have tested even so fast a scorer as Bradman. But there is not a scintilla of doubt that he would have relished and risen above the challenge.
His speed of foot and eye, as well as modern bats, would have enabled him to compensate for a slight physique. His preference for keeping the ball on the ground would either have been tempered by a decision to hit some balls for six - there was never so calculating a batsman - or by his skill in finding gaps in the field with full-blooded strokes played late. He would have handled the modern media without relish but shrewdly and articulately. Not even Sachin Tendulkar has had to live in a goldfish bowl for as long as the Don. Short-pitched bowling would have been no handicap given the extra protection of a helmet.
His powers of concentration - he scored 37 double and 12 triple centuries - would have ensured the same prolific achievements in first-class cricket now as then, especially given covered pitches.
Bill O'Reilly, an opponent and team-mate, said: “As soon as the ball left your hand, you could see him moving into position ... aggressively and with tremendous speed. His footwork was the best, his strokesmanship comprehensive. He could play an attacking shot savagely to any part of the field ... and it was part of Bradman's tremendous competitive spirit that he felt it his bounden duty to reduce every bowler to incompetency.†And so he did, from the late 1920s until his dignified withdrawal from playing in 1949.
Eric Midwinter's obituary, reprinted in a new edition of Bradman in Wisden, is a reminder that the greatest of all specialist batsmen, who died in 2001, had a wider role as a towering figure of popular culture and the unwitting symbol and unifier of a nation.
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