Don Bradman

Sir Donald George Bradman AC (27 August, 1908—25 February, 2001), often called The Don, was an Australian cricketer, administrator and writer on the game universally acknowledged to be the greatest batsman of all time. He is one of Australia's most popular sporting heroes, and one of the most respected past players in other cricketing nations, as demonstrated by the number of tributes paid to him when he died. His career Test batting average of 99.94 is by some measures the greatest statistical performance of all time in any major sport. By way of comparison, the second and third best Test averages over completed careers of any length (ie. 20 Tests or more) are 60.97 and 60.83.

The story of how Don Bradman taught himself to play the game and practiced alone using a cricket stump and a golf ball, is a part of Australian folklore. Bradman’s meteoric rise, from playing bush cricket on artificial pitches to becoming the youngest player to make a Test century, took just over two years. Before his 22nd birthday, he set a series of records for high scoring (many of which survive today) and became Australia’s sporting idol at the height of the Great Depression.Such was his impact on the game that special tactics (known as Bodyline) were devised by the England team to curb his brilliance. He later ascended to the Australian captaincy, proving himself a shrewd and aggressive leader despite a shaky start.

During a unique twenty-year career in Test cricket, Bradman was able to overcome a series of personal and professional crises to consistently score at a level that made him “worth three batsmen to Australia”, in the words of ex-England captain Sir Len Hutton. Always committed to attacking, entertaining cricket, Bradman drew spectators to the grounds in record numbers. However, Bradman found the adulation and the constant glare of publicity an anathema and this affected how he dealt with others. The focus of attention on his individual performances strained relationships with some teammates, administrators and journalists who thought him to be aloof and wary.

After World War II, he made a dramatic comeback and in his final season led an Australian team known as “The Invincibles”, arguably the best cricket team in history. So dominant was he that the English writer RC Robertson-Glasgow wrote of his nation’s reaction to Bradman’s departure from the game that, “…a miracle has been removed from among us. So must ancient Italy have felt when she heard of the death of Hannibal.”

A complex, driven man not given to forming many close personal relationships, Bradman maintained his pre-eminence in the game by acting as an administrator, selector and writer for three decades after his retirement. His opinion was always highly sought and so was the (rare) opportunity to meet him. In his declining years he became reclusive, yet paradoxically his status as a national icon increased to the point where the Australian Prime Minister called him the “greatest living Australian”. He appeared on postage stamps and coins, and became the first living Australian to have a museum dedicated to his life. Since his death, writers and academics have attempted to cut through much of the hagiography associated with Bradman to reappraise his mystique and his place in Australian society.

Formative Years

Bradman was the fifth and youngest child of George Bradman and his wife Emily (nee Whatman) when he was born at Cootamundra, New South Wales (NSW). He had an older brother, Victor, and three sisters – Islet, Lilian and Elizabeth May. At the time, the family was living at nearby Yeo Yeo, but when Bradman was about 2½ years old his parents moved to Bowral in the southern highlands of NSW, for the cooler climate.

Bradman's birthplace in Cootamundra is now a museum.

Bradman practiced obsessively during his youth. There was no junior cricket competition in the area, and no boys his own age lived close by. Therefore, he invented his own one-man cricket game using a stump and a golf ball. A water tank stood on a brick stand behind the Bradman home on a covered and paved area. When hit into the curved brick stand, the ball would rebound at high speed and varying angles. This form of practice helped him to develop split-second timing and then react accordingly. At the age of 12, he hit his first century, playing for the Bowral Public School against Mittagong High School.

During the 1920-21 season, he acted as scorer for the local Bowral team captained by his uncle George Whatman. He filled in once when the team was short of players and scored 37 not out. Later that season, Bradman’s father took him to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) to watch the fifth Ashes Test match. On that day, Bradman formed an ambition that he would one day play on the same ground.He also played tennis, rugby league and competed at athletics for his school.

At the end of 1922, Bradman finished his schooling and began work for a local real estate agent, Percy Westbrook. Although Westbrook encouraged Bradman’s sporting pursuits by giving him time off when necessary, Bradman chose to give cricket away and play only tennis in the summer of 1923-24. He didn’t fully return to the game until 1925-26, when several astounding performances for Bowral earned him a lot of attention. Competing on matting over concrete pitches, Bowral played other rural towns as part of the Berrima District competition. In a match that has gone down in Australian cricket folklore, Bradman hit 234 against Wingello whose team included the future Test bowler Bill O’Reilly. In the final against Moss Vale that extended over five consecutive Saturdays, Bradman scored 300, a performance that was closely followed by the Sydney daily press.

During the following winter, an ageing Australian team lost the Ashes in England and a number of great players, many of whom were from NSW, retired. The New South Wales Cricket Association began a hunt for new talent and mindful of Bradman’s big scores for Bowral, wrote to him on 5 October 1926, asking him to attend a practice session in Sydney.Subsequently, Bradman was chosen for the Country Week tournaments at both cricket and tennis, to be played in separate weeks. Percy Westbrook presented his young employee with a fateful ultimatum - he could have only one week away from work, so he had to choose between the two sports.

The Boy from Bowral

Bradman’s performances during Country Week impressed and he was invited to play grade cricket in Sydney for St George, where he scored a century on debut. At New Year, he turned out for the NSW second XI. For the remainder of the season, he travelled the 130km from Bowral to Sydney to play for St George, although he did make one last appearance for his home town in the final against Moss Vale and hit 320 not out.

The next season continued the fast tracking of the “Boy from Bowral” as he was now being called. Selected to replace the unfit Archie Jackson in the NSW team, Bradman made his first-class debut at the Adelaide Oval, aged 19. His innings of 118 featured what would become his trademarks: fast footwork, calm confidence and aggressive, rapid scoring. In the final match of the season, he made a century against the Sheffield Shield champions Victoria, his first at the SCG. Despite his excellent potential, Bradman was not chosen for the Australian second team to tour New Zealand.

With several places up for grabs in an Australian team that needed drastic rebuilding, Bradman decided that his chance for higher honours would be improved by moving to Sydney for the 1928-29 season, when England toured in defence of the Ashes. Initially, he continued working in real estate, but when the office closed, he took a job with the sporting goods retailer Mick Simmons Ltd. In the first match of the Sheffield Shield season, he scored a century in each innings against Queensland, then in front of a packed SCG crowd (which included all four Australian selectors) he made 87 for NSW against England, which he followed up with 132 not out in the second dig. This earned him a place in the Test team for Brisbane.

Bradman's first Test was the ultimate learning experience for a young player competing in his third season on turf wickets, and in only his tenth first-class match. Facing an English team rated as one of the best to ever tour, Australia's new look team crashed to defeat by 675 runs. Bradman was one of a galaxy of failures as the home team struggled on a sticky wicket to be all out for 66 in the second innings. The selectors opted to drop the debutant to twelfth man for the second Test. An injury to Australian batsman Bill Ponsford early in the match meant that Bradman fielded as a substitute in the deep while England amassed 652; this after he had fielded for 863 runs in the first Test. Dick Whitington wrote, “He had scored only nineteen himself and these experiences appear to have provided him with food for thought”.

Reinstated for the next Test at Melbourne in place of Ponsford, Bradman scored 79 and 112 to become the youngest man to make a Test century. However, Australia lost again when they were unable to take advantage of a sticky wicket and bowl England out in the fourth innings. Another narrow loss followed: chasing 349 to win in the last innings, Bradman reached 58 and appeared set to guide the team home when his partner ran him out. It was the only run out of his Test career and the losing margin was only 12 runs.

Bradman with his Wm. Sykes bat, early 1930s. The "Don Bradman Autograph" bat is still manufactured today by Sykes' successor company, Slazenger.

The improving Australians finally broke through to win the final Test. Bradman top scored with 123 in the first innings, and was at the wicket when his captain Jack Ryder hit the winning runs in the second innings. Although they had lost 1-4, there was now optimism in Australian cricket, due to the performances of a talented group of young players. Indeed, some thought that they may have gone close to winning the series had they enjoyed better luck with injuries and the Australian selectors not made some serious blunders.In particular, Bradman’s omission for the second Test was widely criticised.

Bradman completed the season with 1690 first-class runs (at 93.88 average), still the record tally for any season played in Australia. He first demonstrated his liking for the really big score by hitting 340 not out in a Sheffield Shield match against Victoria, thus setting a new record for the SCG. He would improve on this during the summer of 1929-30, as the Australians vied for places in the team to tour England.

For the first time, Bradman averaged over one hundred in a season, and two performances stood out. Firstly, in a trial match to help select the touring side, Bradman made 124 and was last man out. As his side was following on, the skipper Bill Woodfull asked Bradman to keep the pads on and open the second innings. By stumps, he was 205 not out, the only man to score a single and a double century in a day in first-class cricket. Greater fame was in store. Against Queensland at the SCG, Bradman registered a new first-class record of 452 not out, scored in only 415 minutes.

Although he was an automatic selection to go to England, some doubt existed that his self-taught style would succeed on the slower English pitches. Percy Fender, an ex-England player who earned a reputation as one of the game’s great theorists during his captaincy of Surrey, covered the 1928-29 series for the press and later wrote a book on the tour.He echoed the sentiments of a number of English observers of Bradman’s batting when he wrote in his book:

…he may well become a very great player; and if he does [so], he will always be in the category of the brilliant, if unsound, ones. Promise there is in Bradman in plenty, though watching him does not inspire one with any confidence that he desires to take the only course which will lead him to a fulfillment of that promise. He makes a mistake, then makes it again and again; he does not correct it, or look as if he were trying to do so. He seems to live for the exuberance of the moment.

The 1930 Tour of England

The Australians arrived in England as the underdogs for the Ashes series. Much hope rested with a quartet of young NSW players: Bradman, Archie Jackson, Stan McCabe and Alan Fairfax. Many considered that Jackson, with his elegant, cultured batting technique that recalled Victor Trumper, was the brightest prospect of the group. However, Bradman eclipsed the other three, and everyone else besides, starting with a score of 236 at Worcester in his first knock on English soil. He raced to one thousand first-class runs before the end of May, the fifth player (and only Australian) to achieve this rare feat. Taking great care to score 252 not out against Surrey (captained by his critic Percy Fender), Bradman later wrote of this innings, “I thought it best not to make any mistakes.” On his Test debut in England, Bradman hit 131 in the second innings, but it was not enough to stop England winning, as expected.

Bradman’s batting reached another level in the Test at the spiritual home of the game, Lord's. His 254 was a virtuoso performance that Bradman always rated his best ever innings from the standpoint that “practically without exception every ball went where it was intended to go”.Australia totalled a record six for 729, which enabled them to win despite England scoring 425 in their first innings. Enraptured by this performance, cricket writers noted his fast footwork, immaculate placement and unerring concentration. But they would require a new batch of superlatives for his effort in the third Test at Leeds.

On 11 June, Bradman went to the crease when the first wicket fell, after eight minutes play. Playing shots to every part of the ground, he equalled the record shared by Victor Trumper and Charlie Macartney of a century before lunch on the first day of a Test match. In the afternoon, Bradman surpassed the great duo by adding another century between lunch and tea, and finished the day on 309 not out – he is still the only Test player to register three hundred in a single day’s play. Dismissed for 334 (including 46 boundaries) on day two, Bradman’s dominance of the innings is reflected by the second highest score - 77 from Alan Kippax. Expatriate Australian businessman Arthur Whitelaw later presented Bradman with a cheque for ₤1000 in appreciation of his world record score. The match ended in anti-climax as poor weather prevented a result, as it did in the fourth Test when Bradman failed.

The 1930 team. Bradman is second from the right, middle row.

The dynamic nature of his batting contrasted sharply with his quiet and solitary off-field demeanour. Geoffrey Tebbutt, a Melbourne journalist covering the tour for Associated Press, was the first writer to describe Bradman’s aloofness from his teammates. In his book about the tour, Tebbutt recorded that Bradman followed his usual routine after his record innings at Leeds – he retired to his room, ate and listened to a phonograph. The book also touched on the subject of the ₤1000; the tea-drinking Bradman had not even offered to buy his teammates a round of drinks, let alone share the money. A lot of the quiet time Bradman spent writing what became Don Bradman's Book. He had sold the rights to a book to a London literary agent at the beginning of the tour. The book was serialised in The Star during August, and published in November 1930. It was a modest work of 50,000 words with a few pages of tips as an appendix.

For the final, deciding Test at The Oval in London, England changed captains in a last-ditch effort to gain the upper hand. The home side looked good in making 405, but in an innings stretching over three days (due to intermittent rain), Bradman’s score of 232 helped to give Australia a lead of 290 runs. In a crucial partnership with Archie Jackson, Bradman battled through a particularly difficult session when England fast bowler Harold Larwood tried to take advantage of a pitch enlivened by the rain. Wisden gave this period of play little attention in its’ match report:

“On the Wednesday morning the ball flew about a good deal, both batsmen frequently being hit on the body…on more than one occasion each player cocked the ball up dangerously but always, as it happened, just wide of the fieldsmen.”

However, a number of English players and commentators noted Bradman’s discomfort in playing the short, rising delivery. The revelation came too late. England fell to the left-arm bowling of the unsung Queenslander, Percy Hornibrook. Australia won by an innings and regained the Ashes.

The impact of the victory on Australia was immense. With the economy sliding toward depression and the national unemployment level nearing twenty per cent, the country found solace in sporting triumph. The story of a young man, barely 22, from the bush who taught himself how to play, then shattered a series of records at the home of cricket, made great copy for the press. Radio, the new medium, also played a significant role in the adoption of Bradman as a national hero. The matches were “synthetically” broadcast into people’s homes for the first time. Many Australians arrived at work sleep-deprived, having sat up most of the night living every moment.

In all, Bradman batted for 24 ½ hours during the Test series, faced 1580 deliveries and struck 98 boundaries (without a single six) in scoring 974 runs at 139.14 average and 61.65 strike rate.His tally for the tour was another record, 2960 runs (at 98.66 with ten centuries). Both his total of 974 runs and his 3 double centuries in one Test series still stand as records today.

Our Don Bradman

Although accustomed to being feted during the England tour, Bradman was unprepared for the intensity of his reception in Australia. Mick Simmons wanted to cash in on their employee’s newly won fame. They asked Bradman to leave the ship in Fremantle (West Australia) and take the train to Adelaide. From there, he flew to Goulburn (NSW) via an overnight stop in Melbourne. Then, he was driven to his home town of Bowral and finally on to Sydney where he received a brand new custom-built Chevrolet from General Motors. At each stop, “Our Don Bradman” received an official reception and a level of adulation that “embarrassed” him.

Naturally, this type of focus on an individual in a team game had ramifications. Adding to the well publicised criticism offered by Tebbutt, the Australian vice-captain Vic Richardson commented on radio that, “we could have played any team without Bradman, but we could not have played the blind school without [leg spin bowler] Clarrie Grimmett”. Furthermore, the Board of Control ruled that the extracts of Bradman’s book published in The Star technically breached the clause of the tour contract that forbade players from writing about the game. After much press coverage on the issue, the Board fined Bradman ₤50 for the misdemeanour on 29 December 1930.

The Australian team now faced a rare schedule of consecutive Test seasons at home, playing two of the lesser-performed cricketing nations. In 1930-31, against the first West Indian side to visit Australia, Bradman’s scores were more modest than in England, although he did make 223 in 297 minutes in the third Test at Brisbane and 152 in 154 minutes in the following Test at Melbourne. He felt that the controversy with the Board of Control affected his form. The South Africans didn’t get off so lightly in the summer of 1931-32. For NSW against the tourists, he scored 30, 135 and 219, then in the Tests it was 226 (277 minutes), 112 (155 minutes), 2 and 167 (183 minutes), and a new Australian Test record of 299 not out at Adelaide. Australia won nine of the ten Tests, losing only the fifth Test against the West Indies at Sydney.

In fifteen Test matches since the beginning of 1930, Bradman had scored 2,227 runs at 131 average. Ten of his 18 innings were centuries, six of them beyond 200. His scoring rate was almost 44 runs per hour, with 856 (or 38.5%) scored in boundaries - significantly, he had not hit a six. This typified the Bradman attitude: if he hit the ball along the ground, then it couldn’t be caught. During this phase of his career, his youth and natural fitness aided him to adopt this “machine-like” approach. The South African fast bowler “Sandy” Bell could not dismiss Bradman all summer and described bowling to him as “heart-breaking…with his sort of cynical grin, which rather reminds one of the Sphinx…he never seems to perspire”.

Between these two seasons, Bradman seriously contemplated playing professional cricket in England with the Lancashire League club Accrington. For two months in the spring of 1931, the media in England and Australia debated the consequences of a move that would end Bradman’s Test career. Public opinion divided: Australian cricket could not afford to lose him and some thought he was selling his birthright, but at the height of the Depression, working-class people empathised with Bradman. The opportunity to earn over ₤1000 per annum was very tempting to a young man without a profession.

Surprisingly, amongst the English there was no shortage of opposition to the proposal. The Observer commented:

No sporting interest would be served by bringing Bradman to Lancashire…as a salaried run-getter for an English club he would be only a reminder of how money deranged the order of things.

Eventually, a consortium of three Sydney businesses offered an alternative. They devised a two-year contract whereby Bradman would write for Associated Newspapers, broadcast regularly on Radio 2UE and promote the menswear retailing chain FJ Palmer and Son. The sensationalist press coverage contained many reports that he would move, so a sense of relief swept Australia when the deal was announced in late October 1931. However, Bradman’s loyalty to Australia came at cost. The contract was substantially less than the money on offer from Accrington, and it would increase Bradman’s dependence on his public profile, thus making it more difficult to lead the private life that he desired. In addition, writing for the newspapers would again bring him into conflict with the administrators.

Hundreds of onlookers gather as the Bradmans leave the church after their wedding ceremony in 1932.

Bradman’s wedding to Jessie Menzies in April 1932 was chaotic and epitomised how difficult it was for him to lead a private life. The Sydney church where the ceremony took place “was under siege all throughout the day…uninvited guests stood on chairs and pews to get a better view”, police erected barriers which were broken down and many of those invited couldn’t get a seat. Just weeks later, Bradman joined a private team, organised by former Test bowler Arthur Mailey, to tour the United States and Canada. He agreed to go on the proviso that he could travel with his wife, and the couple treated the trip as a honeymoon. Playing 51 games (all second-class) in 75 days, Bradman scored 3,779 runs at 102.1, with 18 centuries. An historical highlight was Bradman’s meeting with the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium in New York on 20 July 1932.Although the standard of cricket on the tour was not high, the amount of cricket Bradman had played in the previous three years, and the strains of his celebrity status, began to show on his return home.

Bodyline

For two years, the Bradman conundrum bedevilled English minds during the preparation for their next tour of Australia. London’s News Chronicle summed up the prevailing sentiment:

As long as Australia has Bradman she will be invincible…In order to keep alive the competitive spirit, the authorities might take a hint from billiards. It is almost time to request a legal limit on the number of runs Bradman should be allowed to make.

Bradman’s erstwhile critic Percy Fender wrote for The Observer: “something new will have to be introduced to curb Bradman…[something] along the lines of theory”. Fender’s successor as captain of Surrey was the amateur batsman Douglas Jardine, who had shared Fender’s tribulations in finding a way to subdue Bradman. “Plum” Warner, the venerable ex-England captain, was a very influential voice within the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the club that administered English cricket at the time. Agreeing with Fender, Warner opined that, “England must evolve a new type of bowler and develop fresh ideas and strange tactics to curb his almost uncanny skill". Warner was the driving force behind the appointment of Jardine as England captain in 1931, with a view to him leading the tour to Australia. Warner would accompany the team as manager.

Encouraged by the perception that Bradman struggled against bouncers on a lively pitch during his 232 at The Oval, Jardine began gathering as much information as possible from players such as Frank Foster who had employed “leg theory” in English cricket. Simply described, leg theory involved the bowler pitching the ball in line with the batsman’s legs, with most of the fielders on the leg side to make it difficult for the batsman to score. It was widely seen as a negative tactic designed to “frustrate” the batsman out and not highly regarded by the game's purists. Jardine’s innovation was to combine traditional leg theory with short-pitched bowling, which would bounce much more alarmingly on the harder Australian pitches.

Jardine settled on the Notts fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce as the spearheads for his tactics after a conversation with the duo's county captain, Arthur Carr. In support, the England selectors chose another three pacemen for the squad. The unusually high number of fast bowlers caused a lot of comment in both countries, while Bradman himself suspected a virulent intent.

Bradman had several other problems to deal with at this time. His health was troubling him. During the tour of North America, he began suffering random bouts of illness from an undiagnosed malaise. The Australian Board of Control was attempting to stop him from writing for the press, claiming that only “professional” journalists (such as his teammate Jack Fingleton) were entitled to do so under the Board’s rules. This led to open confrontation: Bradman was adamant that as he had no contract with the Board, he would honour his contract to Associated Newspapers. If necessary, he would write and not play.

The tour began with these issues unresolved. A quirk of the itinerary meant that Bradman would face the English in three first-class games before the Tests. In six innings, he averaged just 17.16 without making a half-century. After finalising their new tactics on the voyage over, England decided to test them out in only one game, the fixture against an Australian XI in Melbourne. In this match, Bradman faced the leg theory for the first time, and looked distinctly uncomfortable in losing his wicket twice to Larwood. Bradman sought out some local administrators and warned that trouble was brewing if this style of play continued.

The impasse over Bradman’s work for the press was resolved when the editorial chief of Associated Newspapers, R.C. Packer (grandfather of Kerry Packer) agreed to release him from the obligation to write. But he was a late withdrawal for the first Test at Sydney, when a rumour went around that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. In his absence, England persisted with bowling Bodyline (as it was now dubbed) and won an ill-tempered match despite a heroic century from Stan McCabe.

The famous duck: Bradman bowled Bowes at the MCG, in front of a world record crowd assembled to see Bradman defeat Bodyline.

The public clamoured for the return of Bradman to defeat Bodyline: "he was the batsman who could conquer this cankerous bowling..."Bradmania", amounting almost to religious fervour, demanded his return". Included as a replacement for Alan Kippax, Bradman walked to the wicket on the first day of the second Test at the MCG with the score at two for 67. A world record crowd of 63,993 gave him a standing ovation that went on so long that it delayed play for several minutes. Anticipating the bouncer first ball, Bradman moved across to play the hook shot, but the ball failed to rise, he dragged it onto his stumps and so made a first-ball duck for the first time in his Test career. The crowd fell into stunned silence as he walked off.

Yet Australia made the front running in the match, and another record crowd turned out on 2 January 1933 to watch a thrilling second innings century from Bradman. His 103 not out from 146 balls in a team total of 191 helped to set England a target of 251 to win. Bill O’Reilly and Bert Ironmonger bowled Australia to a series-levelling victory amid hopes that Bodyline was beaten.

The third Test at Adelaide Oval proved pivotal to the series. Angry crowd scenes occurred after the Australian skipper Bill Woodfull and wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield were hit by bouncers. In the dressing room, Woodfull rebuked an apologetic Plum Warner as he was arranging treatment for his injuries. The Australian Board of Control, in a cable to the MCC, later repeated the allegation of poor sportsmanship directed at Warner by Woodfull. Furious that a private conversation in the dressing room got into the newspapers, Warner blamed Jack Fingleton for what he considered to be a breach of ethics. In turn, Fingleton believed Bradman responsible, a claim Bradman always denied. This incident led to a major falling-out between the two that lasted until Fingleton's death in 1981. Fingleton was dropped after scoring a pair in the match, was subsequently omitted from the 1934 tour of England and he blamed Bradman for these setbacks.

The continuation of the series was in the balance during an exchange of angry cables between the administrators in both countries. Eventually, England continued with Bodyline despite the Australian protests, and with the support of the MCC. The tourists won the last three Tests convincingly to regain the Ashes, but it would be a pyrrhic victory for the architects of Bodyline. Bradman caused great controversy with his own tactics. Always seeking to score, he often backed away and hit the ball into the vacant half of the outfield with unorthodox shots reminiscent of tennis or golf. This brought him a reasonable 396 runs (at 56.57) for the series and some plaudits for taking the English on. However, some commentators (and teammates) thought that it proved the theory that he didn’t handle the short ball very well. Jack Fingleton was in doubt that Bradman's game altered irrevocably as a consequence, writing:

Cigarette card distributed during the 1934 Ashes series.

Bodyline was specially prepared, nutured for and expended on him and, in consequence, his technique underwent a change quicker than might have been the case with the passage of time. Bodyline plucked something vibrant from his art.

The constant grind of celebrity and the tribulations of the season forced Bradman to reappraise his life outside of the game. With the tripartite contract due to end in 1934, he wanted to change direction and find a career not linked to his fame as a cricketer. The opportunity Bradman was seeking came in the form of an approach from a South Australian (SA) delegate to the Board of Control, Harry Hodgetts, who owned a stockbroking company. Hodgetts offered Bradman work learning the business, with time off to play cricket, if he would relocate to Adelaide and captain South Australia. Unknown to the public, the SA Cricket Association (SACA) had instigated Hodgett’s approach, and would be subsidising Bradman’s wage.Although his wife was unsure about making the move, Bradman eventually agreed to the deal in February 1934.

Back To Form, Then a Brush With Death

In his farewell season for NSW Bradman averaged 132.44, his best yet. During an innings of 253 against Queensland, he shared a partnership of 363 with his captain Alan Kippax, made in only 135 minutes. The team for the tour of England surprisingly had Bradman as its' vice-captain ahead of Kippax, a sure sign that he would be Australia’s next captain.

There was some uncertainty surrounding the series. Australia insisted on a guarantee from the MCC that no team would employ bodyline against them, which was eventually granted. But the team remained unsure of the reception that awaited. The players took a collective decision to refrain from talking to the press in case they printed anything inflammatory, earning the team the nickname the “silent sixteen”. Sentiment within the MCC had turned against Jardine and Larwood, after they had received praise for their Ashes-winning effort, and neither man played against Australia again.

Meanwhile, Bradman’s health was so poor that he initially felt unable to tour. Cleared by a doctor, and told to rest whenever possible, he started off with a double century at Worcester for the second time. However, his famed concentration soon deserted him. When he suffered a run of low scores, it became a talking point. Wisden wrote:

there were many occasions on which he was out to wild strokes. Indeed at one period he created the impression that, to some extent, he had lost control of himself and went in to bat with an almost complete disregard for anything in the shape of a defensive stroke.

At one stage, he went thirteen innings without scoring a century (the longest such spell of his career), prompting some to claim that Bodyline had eroded his confidence and altered his technique. After three Tests, the series was one-all and Bradman had scored 133 runs in five innings.

The Australians travelled north to Yorkshire, and at Sheffield played the last warm up game before the fourth Test. With his health improving, Bradman started slowly and then (according to an opponent that day, Bill Bowes) “…the old Bradman [was] back with us, in the twinkling of an eye, almost”.He went on to 140, with the last 90 runs coming in 45 minutes. On the opening day of the Test at Leeds, England were out for 200, but Australia slumped to three for 39, losing the third wicket from the last ball of the day. Listed to bat at number five, Bradman would start his innings the next day.

That evening, Bradman declined an invitation to dinner from Neville Cardus, telling the journalist that he wanted an early night because the team needed him to make a double century the next day. Cardus pointed out that his previous innings on the ground was 334, and the law of averages was against another such score. Bradman told Cardus, “I don’t believe in the law of averages”.

Bradman hit the first two balls of the second day for four, and batted all day to reach 271. His record partnership of 388 with Bill Ponsford decimated the English attack, and when he was out for 304 (473 balls, 43 fours and two sixes), Australia had a lead of 350 runs. However, rain prevented Australia winning. The effort stretched Bradman’s reserves of energy, and he didn’t play again until the fifth Test at The Oval, the match that would decide the Ashes.

On the first day at The Oval, Bradman and Ponsford shared another massive partnership, this time 451 runs. Bradman’s share was 244 from 271 balls, and the Australian total of 701 set up victory by the convincing margin of 562 runs. For the fourth time in five series, the Ashes changed hands. England would not recover them again until after Bradman's retirement.

Seemingly recovered, Bradman blazed two centuries in the last two games of the tour. During the first, 149 not out against an English XI, he scored 30 runs off one over. In the second his 132 came in 90 minutes against Leveson-Gower’s XI, an effort Bradman described as “the most exciting I ever played in England.”However, when he returned to London with the team to prepare for the trip home, Bradman experienced severe abdominal pain. It took a doctor more than 24 hours to diagnose acute appendicitis and a surgeon operated on Bradman immediately. He lost a lot of blood during the four-hour procedure and peritonitis set in during the post-operative phase. With penicillin and sulphonamides still experimental treatments at this time, this was usually a fatal condition. On 25 September, the hospital issued a statement that Bradman was struggling for his life and that blood donors were needed urgently.

“The effect of the announcement was little short of spectacular”.The hospital could not deal with the number of donors, or with the volume of telephone calls the news generated, so the switchboard was closed. Journalists, such as Neville Cardus, were asked by their editors to prepare an obituary. At the team’s hotel, teammate Bill O’Reilly took a call from King George’s secretary asking that the King be kept informed of the situation. For days, the newspaper headlines in London carried the story of Bradman’s progress and ultimately, his recovery.

Bradman walking out to bat in the third Test against England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1937. His 270 runs won the match for Australia and has been rated the greatest innings of all time.

In Australia, Jessie Bradman started the month-long journey to London as soon as she received the news, but en route she heard the rumour sweeping Australia that her husband had died. A telephone call clarified that he was alive and by the time she reached London, Bradman had begun a slow recovery. Eventually the couple took time to holiday in Britain and the continent as Bradman followed medical advice to recuperate. The Bradmans took several months to return home and finally reached Adelaide in April 1935 to begin their new life there. Bradman missed the 1934-35 season and didn’t play cricket for twelve months.

Internal Politics and the Test Captaincy

There was a good deal of off-field intrigue in Australian cricket during the winter of 1935. Australia, scheduled to make its first full tour of South Africa the following summer, needed to replace the retired Bill Woodfull as captain. Clearly, the Board of Control wanted Bradman to lead the team. On 8 August 1935, the Board announced Bradman as unfit to tour and that he was withdrawing from the squad; yet he led the SA team in a full programme of matches in the absence of the Australian players. Vic Richardson, who Bradman replaced as SA captain, was made Test captain, even though his form didn’t warrant a place in the Australian team.

Chris Harte has thoroughly researched the files of the SACA, and written histories of both the SACA and Australian cricket. His analysis of the situation is that an (unspecified) prior commercial agreement forced Bradman to remain in Australia. Moreover, Harte attributes an ulterior motive to the SACA’s approach to Bradman. The issue of the off-field behaviour of Vic Richardson, and some other regular SA players, had festered over a number of years and the SACA was desperate for a solution.Bradman was recruited to provide new leadership and instil discipline (as well as score runs) and he became a committeeman of the SACA, and a selector of the SA and Australian teams. He took his adopted state to the Sheffield Shield for the first time in ten years and shattered a string of SA records along the way. The highlights included a score of 233 against Queensland, followed immediately by 357 against Victoria and 369 (in 233 minutes) versus Tasmania in the final match of the season.

Australia had a very successful South African series and senior players such as Bill O’Reilly were pointed in their comments about the enjoyment of playing under Richardson’s captaincy. A clique of players who were openly hostile toward Bradman formed during the tour. For some, the prospect of playing for Bradman was daunting, as was the knowledge that he would be sitting in judgment of their abilities in his role as a selector.

To start the new season, the Test team that took on South Africa played a rest of Australia side captained by Bradman at Sydney in early October 1936. The Test XI suffered a big defeat, due to Bradman’s 212 and a bag of twelve wickets by leg-spinner Frank Ward. Rather undiplomatically, Bradman let the members of the Test team know that despite their recent success, they were not quite as good as they believed themselves to be.

Just a few weeks later, tragedy intervened in Bradman’s life. On 28 October, his first child (a son) was born, but died the next day. Bradman stood out of cricket for two weeks, then made 192 in three hours against Victoria in the last match before the beginning of the Ashes series.

The Test team showed five changes from the winning combination Australia fielded in their previous Test at Durban. Australia’s most successful bowler, leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett was omitted in favour of Ward, one of four players making their debut. The controversy over Grimmett’s continuing omission from the team dogged Bradman for the next two years – he was regarded as having finished the veteran’s Test career.

Bradman and England captain Gubby Allen toss at the start of the 1936-37 Ashes series. The five Tests drew more than 950,000 spectators including a world record 350,534 to the third Test at Melbourne.

Playing an undermanned England team that had struggled on the tour thus far, Australia copped the worst of the weather conditions in the opening two Tests and crashed to successive losses. Bradman made two ducks in his four innings, and it seemed the captaincy was affecting his form. No team had won a Test series after going 0-2 down, so the sense of urgency surrounding the Australian team was acute – the selectors (who constantly altered the team all summer) made four changes for the third match at Melbourne.

On the first day of 1937, Bradman won the toss, but failed again with the bat - the Australian batting couldn’t take advantage of an easy wicket and finished the day at six for 181. Rain dramatically altered the course of the game on the second day. Bradman declared to get England in on the sticky wicket; England conceded a lead of 124 and declared to get Australia back in; Bradman countered by reversing his batting order to protect his run-makers until the wicket improved. The ploy worked and Bradman went in at number seven. In an epic knock spread over three days, he battled a dose of influenza and scored 270 off 375 balls, sharing a record partnership of 346 with Jack Fingleton.At 458 minutes, it proved the longest innings of his career and Australia went on to victory.In 2001, Wisden rated this performance as the best Test match innings of all time.

At Adelaide, England appeared to have the upper hand in the next Test when Bradman played another patient second innings, making 212 from 395 balls and his team levelled the series when the erratic left-arm spinner “Chuck” Fleetwood-Smith bowled Australia to victory. In the series-deciding fifth Test, Bradman returned to a more aggressive style and in less than four hours, he top-scored with 169 (off 191 balls) in Australia’s 604. The weight of runs crushed the opposition and an innings victory ensued, so Australia retained the Ashes. The achievement of winning a series after going 0-2 down has yet to be equalled in Test cricket.

The Ashes Retained, the End of an Era

While leading the 1938 team in England, Bradman played the most consistent cricket of his career. He needed to score heavily as the English had a significantly strengthened batting line-up, while the Australian bowling was threadbare, with an over-reliance on Bill O’Reilly. Clarrie Grimmett was once again overlooked, a decision that was attributed to Bradman, who thought the veteran spinner too old. This time Jack Fingleton made the team and a clique of players that had previously been in conflict with Bradman remained in place. The prolonged absence of batsman Sid Barnes, who injured himself on the voyage over, further weakened the team. The Board of Control refused Bradman’s request for a substitute player.

Bradman (left) with his vice captain Stan McCabe go out to bat at the WACA ground, Perth, in a preliminary match to the 1938 tour of England. He scored 102

Playing 26 innings on tour, Bradman recorded 13 centuries (a new record) with scores of 278 at Lord's against MCC, 258 in the tour opener at Worcester and 202 against Somerset the highlights. Once again, he made a thousand first-class runs before the end of May, the only player to do so twice. In scoring 2429 runs, Bradman achieved the highest average ever recorded in an English season: 115.66. However, unusual circumstances conspired to keep him to just six innings in a Test series played on batting-friendly wickets.

In the first Test, Australia conceded a massive first innings score and looked like going under when Stan McCabe played his classic knock of 232, a performance Bradman rated as the best he had ever seen. With Australia forced to follow-on, Bradman fought hard to ensure McCabe’s effort was not in vain, and he secured the draw with 144 not out. It was the slowest Test hundred of his career, and at one point he suffered the slow handclap from the frustrated spectators. Similarly, in the next Test, Bradman made a rear-guard second innings century as Australia struggled to draw a match that England dominated from the start. Rain completely washed out the third Test at Manchester.

Australia’s opportunity came at Headingley, a Test described by Bradman as the best he ever played. In the only low-scoring contest of the series, England conceded the lead on first innings. Tactically, Bradman backed himself by opting to bat on in poor light when he had the option to go off, and he scored 103 out of 242. The gamble paid off. An England collapse left a target of only 107, but Australia slumped to four for 61 with Bradman out for 16. As a large storm approached the ground, Lindsay Hassett hit Australia to a victory that retained the Ashes. For the only time in his life, the tension got to Bradman and he couldn’t watch the closing stages of play. This response reflected the pressure that he felt all tour: he later described the captaincy as “exhausting” and that he “found it difficult to keep going”.

Ironically, the euphoria of Leeds preceded Bradman’s heaviest defeat. At The Oval, England amassed a world record of seven for 903 and their opening batsman Len Hutton scored 364, breaking Bradman’s Ashes record by thirty runs. Bradman rushed to congratulate Hutton after he passed the milestone. In an attempt to relieve the burden on his bowlers, Bradman took a rare turn at the bowling crease. During his third over, he rolled over his ankle and fractured it, and teammates carried him from the ground. With Bradman and Fingleton unable to bat, Australia was thrashed by an innings and 579 runs, which remains the largest margin in Test cricket history.

Unfit to complete the tour, Bradman left the team in the hands of Stan McCabe and spent time recuperating at the home of his friend Walter Robins, the England spin bowler. There, he was joined by his wife (an arrangement not usually allowed by the Board of Control) - the administrators agreed to Bradman’s request to have her present only when pressured by the remainder of the team. At this point, Bradman felt that the burden of captaincy would prevent him from touring England again, although he didn’t make this decision public. Australia had done well to retain the Ashes with so many obstacles to overcome.

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Caricature by ex-Australian Test player Arthur Mailey (c1939).

Despite his inner turmoil, Bradman’s batting form remained supreme. An experienced, mature player now more commonly called “The Don” replaced the blitzing style of his early days as the “Boy from Bowral”. In the following Australian season, he led SA to the Sheffield Shield. He batted just seven times, making a century in each of the first six innings, equalling the world record of CB Fry. From the beginning of the 1938 tour of England (including preliminary games in Tasmania and West Australia) until early 1939, Bradman totalled 21 first-class centuries in just 34 innings.

While considering his personal future in the light of his decision to not tour again, Bradman made an abortive bid to move to Victoria. The Melbourne Cricket Club advertised for the position of club secretary following the death of the incumbent, former Test great Hugh Trumble.The job was the most sought after, and highest paying, sports administration post in Australia.Bradman was led to believe that if he applied, he would get the job. On 18 January 1939, a vote was taken by the committee to choose between Bradman and ex-Test batsman Vernon Ransford (a Victorian). With the vote tied, the club's president Sir Edward Mitchell gave a casting vote to Ransford.

With the arrival of his son John in the winter of 1939, Bradman looked forward to just one more Ashes series at home and then retirement. World events would thwart these plans, however. Australia, in support of Great Britain, declared war on Germany in September 1939. Australians began enlisting in the armed forces, and sportsmen were expected to serve their country. The Australian government permitted the 1939-40 cricket season to proceed as scheduled, with the matches taking place during the lull in fighting known in Europe as the “Phoney War”.

It was his most productive season ever for SA: 1448 runs at 144.8 average. Included in Bradman’s three double centuries was a score of 251 not out against NSW, the innings that he rated the best he ever played in the Sheffield Shield as he tamed Bill O’Reilly at the height of his form. However, it was the end of an era. The worsening situation in Europe led to the indefinite postponement of all cricket tours, and the suspension of the Sheffield Shield competition.

Troubled War Years

Following the fall of France, there was a surge of new enlistments in Australia, one of whom was Bradman: he joined the RAAF on 28 June 1940. Passed fit for air crew duty, he bided his time in Adelaide as the RAAF faced the problem of having more recruits than it could equip and train. Four months later, the Governor-General of Australia, Lord Gowrie, persuaded Bradman to transfer to the army, where he was given the rank of lieutenant and posted to the Army School of Physical Training at Frankston, Victoria. It was intended that he would act as a divisional supervisor of physical training and eventually serve in the Middle East. But the physical exertions required at the camp aggravated his chronic muscular and back problems, now diagnosed as fibrositis. In addition, a routine army test revealed that Bradman had poor eyesight.

Invalided out of the service in June 1941, Bradman was joined by his family (which now included a daughter, Shirley) at Mittagong, New South Wales. He spent months recuperating at his in-laws’ property, unable to shave himself or comb his hair, so bad was his muscular pain. Returning to Adelaide in 1942, Bradman resumed stockbroking and spent many hours administering the Gowrie Scholarship Trust Fund, a charitable scholarship scheme for servicemen and their descendants.

Charles Williams, in his 1996 biography of Bradman, expounded the theory that many of his physical problems were psychosomatic, induced by stress and possibly clinical depression. Bradman read the manuscript of the book and didn’t disagree with this overview. Undoubtedly, his problems were at their worst during the war years and had any cricket been played at this time, he wouldn’t have been available. Bradman did find some relief in 1945 when he was referred to the Melbourne masseur Ern Saunders, but he had permanently lost the feeling in the thumb and index finger of his right hand.

With the war coming to an end, Bradman had another serious crisis to face. In June 1945, the firm of Harry Hodgetts collapsed due to fraud and embezzlement. Many assumed that Bradman was complicit in the collapse; he was sometimes (erroneously) referred to as a partner of Hodgetts. Bradman moved quickly, a little too quickly for some, to set up his own business utilizing Hodgetts’ client list and his old office in Grenfell Street, Adelaide. The fallout led to a prison term for Hodgetts, and left a stigma attached to Bradman’s name in the city’s business community for many years.

However, the SA Cricket Association had no hesitation in appointing Bradman as their delegate to the Australian Board of Control in place of Hodgetts, making him the youngest delegate in the Board’s history. Now working along side some of the men he had battled with in the 1930s, Bradman quickly became a leading light in the administration of the game in Australia. He was asked to resume his position as an Australian selector, and had a major role in the planning for the resumption of cricket after the war.

"The Ghost of a Once Great Cricketer"

Don Bradman

In the first post-war season of 1945-46, Bradman was still suffering periodic bouts of fibrositis while coming to terms with his increased administrative duties and the development of his stockbroking business. Persuaded to appear for South Australia in two matches to help with the re-establishment of big cricket, Bradman later described his batting in these games as “painstaking.” At the end of the European war, a team of Australian servicemen was formed under the captaincy of Lindsay Hassett. They played in England and India, and then toured Australia, attracting much public interest. Batting against the Services team, Bradman scored 112 in less than two hours, yet his former SA teammate Dick Whitington (playing for the Services) wrote that “I have seen today the ghost of a once great cricketer.” Bradman declined the Australian tour of New Zealand and spent the winter of 1946 unsure if he had played his last match.

With the English team due to arrive for the first post-war Ashes series, the press and public were anxious to know if Bradman would be leading the Australian team. Not confident that his fitness would last the season, his doctor recommended against a return to the game. However, encouraged by his wife, Bradman agreed to play in some fixtures leading up to the Test series. After two centuries in three matches, Bradman made himself available for the first Test at the Gabba.

The decisive moment of the Ashes contest came as early as the first day of the series. After compiling an unconfident 28 runs, Bradman hit a ball to the gully fieldsman, Jack Ikin. An appeal for a catch was contentiously denied, the umpire ruling it a bump ball. At the end of the over, the English captain Wally Hammond had a verbal dig at Bradman, and “from then on the series was a cricketing war just when most people desired peace.” Bradman regained his finest pre-war form and went on to 187, following that with 234 (in sharing a record partnership of 405 with Sid Barnes) during the second Test at Sydney. Australia won both matches by an innings. Many cricket historians have speculated that had the decision at Brisbane gone against him, Bradman may have retired, such were his fitness problems at the time.

In the remainder of the series, Bradman made four half centuries in six innings, yet was unable to muster the effort required to turn any of them into a hundred. Nevertheless, his team won handsomely and he was the leading batsman on either side, with a record average of 97.14. Nearly 850,000 people flocked to the Tests, which played an important part in lifting public spirits after the privations of the war.

Century of Centuries and The Invincibles

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The 1948 "Invincibles" en route to England. Bradman is standing with hat in hand, third from the left.

Bradman’s last full Australian season in 1947-48 featured two historic highlights: India made its first tour of Australia to play the inaugural Test series between the two countries, and on 15 November Bradman made 172 against them for an Australian XI at Sydney, his one hundredth first-class century. The first non-Englishman to achieve the feat, Bradman remains the only Australian to do so. In the five Tests, he scored 715 runs at the second best average of his career, 178.75. He scored his last double century (201) at Adelaide, and a century in each innings of the Melbourne Test – one of the few distinctions that had so far eluded him. He announced to the press on the eve of the fifth Test that the match would be his last in Australia, although he would be making the tour of England as a farewell to the game.

By now, Australia had assembled one of the great teams of cricket history, and Bradman made it known among the players that he wanted the team to go through the tour without a loss, a feat never before accomplished. The team arrived in an England still rebuilding after the destruction wrought by the war, and many spectators were drawn to their matches knowing that it would be their last opportunity to see Bradman in action. In the 1949 edition of Wisden, RC Robertson-Glasgow observed of Bradman that:

Next to Mr. Winston Churchill, he was the most celebrated man in England during the summer of 1948. His appearances throughout the country were like one continuous farewell matinée. At last his batting showed human fallibility. Often, especially at the start of the innings, he played where the ball wasn't, and spectators rubbed their eyes.

Despite his waning powers, Bradman still compiled eleven centuries in his 2,428 runs (average 89.92). His highest score of the tour (187) came against Essex, when the team compiled a world record of 721 runs in a day. In the Tests, he scored a century at Nottingham, but his only truly vintage performance came in the fourth Test at Leeds. English captain Norman Yardley declared on the last morning of the game, setting Australia a world record 404 runs to win in only 345 minutes on a heavily-worn wicket. In partnership with Arthur Morris (182), Bradman reeled off 173 not out and the match was won with fifteen minutes to spare. The journalist Ray Robinson called the victory “the ‘finest ever’ in its conquest of seemingly insuperable odds.”

Bradman's career performance graph.

At The Oval for the final Test, Bradman walked out to bat in Australia’s first innings to a standing ovation from the crowd and three cheers from the opposition, with his batting average standing at 101.39. Facing the wrist-spin of Eric Hollies, Bradman pushed forward to the second ball that he faced, was deceived by a wrong 'un, and bowled between bat and pad for no score. The crowd quickly recovered from the shock of what became the most famous duck in Test cricket since Bradman’s first-baller at the MCG in the Bodyline series to give him another massive ovation as he returned to the pavilion. An England batting collapse resulted in an innings defeat, denying Bradman the opportunity to bat again and so his average finished at 99.94 – just four runs short of an even hundred. The story perpetuated over many years that Bradman missed the ball because of tears in his eyes was a claim he denied for the rest of his life.

Australia won the Ashes 4-0 and completed the tour unbeaten, thus entering history as “The Invincibles.” Just as Bradman’s legend grew, rather than diminished, over the years, so too has the reputation of the 1948 team. For Bradman, it was the most personally fulfilling period of his playing days, as the divisiveness of the 1930s had passed. In Farewell to Cricket, Bradman revealed something of his personality and of the causes of his problems in the early years of his captaincy with this summation of his leadership of The Invincibles:

Knowing the personnel, I was confident that here at last was the great opportunity which I had longed for. A team of cricketers whose respect and loyalty were unquestioned, who would regard me in a fatherly sense and listen to my advice, follow my guidance and not question my handling of affairs…What a difference between the mental outlook of a captain who is forty years of age and easily the senior member, and that of one who is several years junior to some of the men playing under him. There are no longer any fears that they will query the wisdom of what you do. The result is a sense of freedom to give full reign to your own creative ability and personal judgment.

Retirement and Knighthood

After the team’s return to Australia, Bradman played in three testimonial games in the summer of 1948-49. In his own testimonial match at Melbourne, Bradman scored his 117th and last century, receiving ₤9,342 in proceeds. In the New Year’s Honours List, Bradman was made a Knight Bachelor for his services to the game. He published a memoir, Farewell to Cricket in 1950. During the coming years, Bradman would be flooded with offers to write more books and newspaper articles, the vast majority of which he declined.

Bradman did accept an offer from London’s Daily Mail to travel with, and write about, the 1953 Australian team in England. He did likewise during Australia’s 1956 tour (taking his family with him both times) but never succumbed to the lure of regular journalism. There was one last book (The Art of Cricket, published in 1958), an instructional manual considered a classic of its' genre and still relevant today for students of the game. In June 1954, on his doctor’s recommendation, Bradman retired from his stockbroking business, handing over to a long-time business associate, Len Bullock. After this move, Bradman derived a “comfortable” income as a board member of sixteen publicly-listed companies, such as Kelvinator Australia Ltd, Clarkson Ltd, FH Faulding & Co Ltd, and SA Rubber Mills Ltd. His highest profile affiliation was with Argo Investments Limited, where he was Chairman for a number of years. Charles Williams describes the change in direction of Bradman’s life in 1954 thus:

…Bradman still had plenty of energy and, like any energetic man in what might be described as early middle age, set himself to find an occupation. In reality, however, there was only one choice. Since business was excluded on medical grounds, the only sensible alternative was a career in the administration of the game which he loved and to which he had given most of his active life.

In the wake of his playing retirement, Australian cricket began to struggle, both on and off the field. The Test team suffered a number of defeats, beginning with the loss of the Ashes in 1953. Without Bradman’s presence, attendances curtailed and domestic matches became financially unviable. This was mitigated by an increasing international programme, which made Australian cricket financially reliant on Test match gates. However, an era of defensive cricket, dominated by stodgy batting, illegal bowling actions and slow over rates, began in the mid-1950s. In a more affluent post-war society undergoing significant change due to extensive immigration, cricket lost ground to other sports such as tennis and golf. As a selector, Bradman made it known that he favoured attacking, positive players who could entertain the paying public. During his first period as Chairman of the Board of Control (which he combined with his role as selector), he formed an alliance with Australian captain Richie Benaud in seeking more attractive play. The duo was given much of the credit for the exciting 1960-61 tour by the West Indies, which included the first ever tied Test at Brisbane. So successful was the series that hundreds of thousands of people gave the tourists a ticker-tape farewell in Melbourne.

Major accolades continued to accrue. The MCC awarded Bradman life membership in 1958 and his portrait hung in the Long Room at Lord's. He opened the new “Bradman Stand” at the SCG during a Test match against New Zealand in January 1974. Later in the year, he travelled overseas for the final time, to London where he again experienced heart problems. This led to a decision to limit his appearances to very special occasions only. With his wife, he made a sentimental return to Bowral in 1976, where the new cricket ground (built on the site of the ground he played on as a teenager) was named in his honour. He gave the main speech at the historic Centenary Test at Melbourne in 1977 and the following year attended a reunion of his 1948 team, organised by the Primary Club charity. After this, he could be persuaded to write the occasional foreword to a book on the game, but he stopped speaking publicly. He received some criticism for not airing an opinion on the World Series Cricket debate, even though he was intimately involved in the negotiations as a member of the ACB. On 16 June 1979, the Australian government awarded Bradman the nation’s second highest civilian honour, Companion of the Order of Australia (AC). In 1980, he resigned from the ACB and led a more secluded life.

Administrative career

Bradman’s administrative career was much longer than his playing career, and proved just as influential. In addition to acting as South Australia’s delegate to the Board of Control (later renamed the Australian Cricket Board and now Cricket Australia) from 1945 to 1980, he was a committeeman of the SA Cricket Association (SACA) from the time of his arrival in Adelaide during 1935 until he retired in 1986. Chris Harte has estimated that Bradman attended 1713 SACA meetings during this half century of service. He was also a selector for the Test team between 1936 and 1971, apart from two years in the early 1950s when he stood down due to his son’s illness.

He had two high-profile stints as chairman of the Board of Control, in 1960-63 and 1969-72. During the first period, he dealt with the growing prevalence of “chucking” in the game (ie. bowling with an illegal action) and liaised with the English authorities to help solve a problem that Bradman himself called “the most complex I have known in cricket, because it was not a matter of fact but of opinion.” The major controversy of his second stint was a proposed tour of Australia by South Africa in 1971-72.Bradman weighed the matter very carefully and consulted widely, then recommended cancellation of the series, thus heeding the views of those who opposed contact with a country that utilised Apartheid laws to segregate society.

The journalist Mike Coward wrote that:

Bradman was more than a cricket player nonpareil. He was…an astute and progressive administrator; an expansive thinker, philosopher and writer on the game. Indeed, in some respects, he was as powerful, persuasive and influential a figure off the ground as he was on it.

Although no longer chairman of the ACB, Bradman played an important role during the World Series Cricket (WSC) schism of the late 1970s. He was no fan of the concept, or of some of the personalities involved, but he dealt with WSC in a more pragmatic manner than other members of the ACB. Bradman realised the weaknesses inherent in Australian cricket and appears to have favoured compromise very early in the dispute. Richie Benuad, hired as a consultant and commentator for WSC, had enjoyed a close relationship with Bradman when captaining Australia during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1977, he prepared a document for WSC on the inner workings of official cricket, and described Bradman as “a brilliant administrator and businessman” and that he was not to be underestimated.

In the first season of peace between the two organisations (1979-80), Bradman felt that Packer’s men, who were now running the game, were easing him out. Ian Chappell, the former Australian captain who was later very critical of Bradman’s role in the problems that led to WSC, was playing his last season. An umpire reported him for his on-field conduct in his first match back from a three-week suspension. Bradman was asked to head a three-man disciplinary hearing for Chappell, who arrived at the hearing drinking a beer. Chris Harte quotes Bradman on what transpired:

It was a set-up. The two other Board members cried off with feeble excuses and I had to sit alone in judgment. I heard the case; found Chappell guilty as charged, and suspended him forthwith for a period of six weeks. I sent my report to the Board who did not back me up. Chappell’s sentence was suspended. I had no other course of action than to see the season through and not re-nominate again.

Shortly after the hearing, Chappell was recalled to the Australian team for the first time in four years. In recent times, he has commented that Bradman should have held more empathy with the players’ quest for better pay, bearing in mind that Bradman had fought with the Board in the early 1930s over similar issues. While Chappell has suggested that Bradman was parsimonious and treated the ACB's money as his own, Gideon Haigh considers that Bradman was merely applying the standards of his own generation without taking into account that society (and sports) were changing. Haigh wrote in 2001:

Bradman's playing philosophy - that cricket should not be a career, and that those good enough could profit from other avenues - also seems to have borne on his approach to administration. Biographers have disserved Bradman in glossing over his years in officialdom. His strength and scruples over more than three decades were exemplary; the foremost master of the game became its staunchest servant. But he largely missed the secular shift toward the professionalisation of sport in the late '60s and early '70s, which finally found expression in Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket...Discussing Packer, Bradman told biographer Charles Williams in January 1995 he `"accepted that cricket had to become professional"

Later Years and Legacy

The Anglo-Australian cricket writer David Frith was a friend of Bradman for over thirty years and he summed up the paradox of the continuing fascination with a Bradman now absent from the public eye:

As the years passed, with no lessening of his reclusiveness, so his public stature continued to grow, until the sense of reverence and unquestioning worship left many of his contemporaries scratching their heads in wondering admiration.

Although he was modest about his own abilities and generous in his praise of other cricketers, “Bradman knew perfectly well how great a player he had been”.In his later years, he consented to assist in a number of biographical projects that told the story exclusively from his point of view. The historian Bernard Wimpress examined Bradman’s attempt to fashion his own historical legacy, and stated:

Bradman was always careful about his own image and how he would be viewed in Australian and cricket history. In the 1990s a revival of interest, which almost amounted to idolatory, turned The Don into an iconic figure…Bradman himself encouraged a more aesthetic representation of his batting…than had previously existed.

The Bradman Stand (1990) at the Adelaide Oval. Bradman appeared here regularly to sign autographs and watch the cricket until 1998

Bradman achieved this by carefully selecting the people to whom he gave assistance. In 1983, extensive interviews and archives provided to Michael Page formed the basis of an illustrated biography and later, a pictorial essay.As part of Australia’s bicentennial celebrations, he agreed to a long interview for ABC radio, which aired as Bradman: The Don Declares in eight 55-minute episodes.The veteran ABC broadcaster Norman May did the interview. During the 1990s, the author Roland Perry parlayed his friendship with Bradman into a series of books (and used comments from Bradman in a number of other books), the first of which was another biography.Around the same time, Bradman consented to an interview with Charles Williams for his biographical work that attempted to place Bradman in the context of Australian society.

However, the most influential project was the creation of the Bradman Museum Trust in 1987.This established a museum at the Bradman Oval in Bowral and in 1993 it was restructured as a non-profit charitable trust known as the Bradman Foundation. To fund the organisation, Bradman signed over the intellectual property rights to his name, likeness and image to the foundation in the early 1990s. This created a stream of merchandising that coincided with the boom in sports memorabilia. Previously, Bradman had refused endorsements since the early 1930s.

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In 1997, Bradman became the first living Australian to feature on an Australian postage stamp

This commitment to the foundation led to one final media event. Bradman agreed to a television interview on Australia’s Nine Network after a personal offer of $1.2 million (donated to the Bradman Foundation) from the network’s owner Kerry Packer. Given the choice of interviewer, Bradman opted for Ray Martin and the resultant program was broadcast on 29 May 1996, as 87 Not Out.

In 1996, he was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame as one of the ten inaugural members. In 2000, Bradman was selected by a distinguished panel of experts as one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Century. Each member of the panel selected five cricketers, and Bradman was the only player to be named by all 100 correspondents. The other four cricketers selected for the honour were Sir Garfield Sobers (90 votes), Sir Jack Hobbs (30 votes), Shane Warne (27 votes) and Sir Vivian Richards (25 votes). Some members of the panel commented that two of the five votes cast would be effectively wasted, as they had to be cast for Bradman and Sobers. In 2002, the Wisden rated Bradman as the greatest ever Test batsman. Tendulkar, Garry Sobers, Vivian Richards were placed at 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions respectively.

After a battle with cancer, Jessie Bradman died in 1997, and David Frith recorded that Bradman suffered “a discernable and not unexpected wilting of spirit”.Bradman hosted a meeting with his two favourite modern players, Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar, at his house on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, but he was not seen in his familiar place at the Adelaide Oval again. Hospitalised with pneumonia in December 2000, he returned home in the new year and died there on 25 February 2001.

Bradman's Batting Technique

Bradman’s unique batting technique has been the subject of curiosity and analysis from the time he first played on turf wickets in Sydney during 1926. His short stature shaped his early development, as he had to deal with the high bounce of the ball on matting over concrete pitches. Finding that the horizontal-bat shots (such as the hook, pull and cut) were the most productive for run scoring, Bradman devised a grip on the bat handle that would accommodate these strokes without compromising his ability to defend. “Johnny” Moyes, a NSW selector when Bradman first trialled at the SCG, wrote in his biography of Bradman that:

With most players, the [bat] handle runs across the palm of the [right, or bottom] hand and rests against the ball of the thumb. With Bradman, the hand is turned over so far that the handle presses against the ball of the thumb. As the grip tightens, the pressure becomes more intense. The left [top] hand is turned so that the wrist is behind the handle…The combined result is that the bat slopes at an angle of about forty-five degrees from the ground, and so keeps the ball down, ensuring that in both the hook and the cut the blade is automatically turned over the ball.

Bradman hooks English left-arm bowler Bill Voce during the 1936-37 series. Note the position of Bradman's left foot in relation to the stumps, an example of how he "used the crease" when batting.

He employed a wide, side-on stance at the wicket, preferring to keep perfectly still as the bowler ran in.Placing the bat between his feet (rather than behind his rear foot) was another unorthodox feature of his game.All these elements combined to give his backswing a “crooked” look, in that the face of the bat pointed at the slips cordon, rather than going straight, as advised in the coaching manuals. This “crookedness” troubled his early critics, but Bradman resisted any major technical changes and it became a moot point after his record-breaking tour of England in 1930.

In his recent book Bradman Revisted, Tony Shillinglaw utilised a biomechanical analysis of Bradman conducted by Liverpool John Moores University in England. Shillinglaw concluded that Bradman’s initially perceived weakness was actually the key reason for his success - it created a “rotary” action in his swing of the bat that delivered extra power and ensured that he kept the ball along the ground. This was summarised in a paper titled Uncovering the Secrets of The Don: Bradman Reassessed as follows:

…he levered the bat up by pushing down with the top hand, whilst using the bottom hand as a fulcrum. As it neared the top of the back-lift, Bradman manoeuvred the bat through a continuous arc and back towards the plane of the ball during the downswing in preparation for impact.

Additionally, his backswing (according to former Australian captain Greg Chappell) kept his hands in close to his body, leaving him perfectly balanced and able to change his stroke mid-swing, if need be. Another telling factor was the decisiveness of Bradman’s footwork. Bill O’Reilly noted that after experiencing turf wickets, Bradman significantly developed his back-foot play which improved his defence and run scoring opportunities behind the wicket.. Many photographs graphically demonstrate his ability to “use the crease” by either coming metres down the wicket to drive, or playing so far back that his feet ended up level with the stumps when playing the cut, hook or pull.

O’Reilly also wrote that, “Should a bowler 'put one over' him it was best that it capture his wicket, for the same bowler could bet that the same trick would not work again during the day”. Bradman’s game evolved with experience, as these comments from Wisden regarding his play on consecutive tours of England demonstrate:

1930 - …[in defence] he nearly always stepped back to meet the ball with a vertical bat. And this is where he had his limitations, for the tour proved that when he met a bowler either left-hand or right who could make the ball just go away he never seemed quite such a master as against off-break or straight fast bowling. A glorious driver, he hit the ball very hard, while his placing was almost invariably perfect. He scored most of his runs by driving...only on rare occasions did he lift it.

1934 - It was noticeable that in many innings Bradman lifted the ball to a far greater extent than when he came here first...it was obvious that in the course of four years he had improved his technique almost out of knowledge. He was much more interesting to look at because of the wider range of his scoring strokes. At his best he was probably harder to get out than ever…

1938 - One did not detect any waning of his powers. Judged by the standard he himself set, he was perhaps a shade better...his concentration, as shown when in the first two Test matches the stage of affairs demanded that he should bat cautiously, was astonishing.

Famously, Bradman temporarily adapted his technique during the Bodyline series, deliberately moving around the crease in an attempt to hit the short deliveries into the vacant off-side. He had the capacity to switch between a defensive or attacking innings at will during the peak of his career in the mid-1930s. After the war, he again readjusted, batting within the physical limitations set by his ageing body, to become a steady “accumulator” of runs.

However, he never truly mastered batting on sticky wickets. Although O’Reilly commented that, “wet wickets had shown me that no batsman was really worth a damn when the ball was rising at varying heights”. "If there really is a blemish on his amazing record it is...the absence of a significant innings on one of those 'sticky dogs' of old, when the ball was hissing and cavorting under a hot sun following heavy rain. This is not to say he couldn't have played one, but that on the big occasion, when the chance arose, he never did".

Statistical assessment

Over an international career spanning 20 years from 1928 to 1948, Bradman's batting achievements are unparalleled. His career statistics are far superior to those of any other batsman, and a testament to his unusual powers of concentration. He broke scoring records for both first-class and Test cricket. The final batting average achieved by Bradman was, famously, 99.94. This record (approximately 65% higher than that achieved by anyone else in a career of any length, see Context section, below) was the product of a career of astonishingly consistent high scoring and a final incident of rare failure. Bradman's complete career totals are as follows:

	Innings	Not Out	Highest	Aggregate	Average	100s	100s/inns
Ashes Tests	63	7	334	5,028	89.78	19	30.16%
All Tests	80	10	334	6,996	99.94	29	36.25%
Sheffield Shield	96	15	452*	8,926	110.19	36	37.50%
All First Class	338	43	452*	28,067	95.10	117	34.62%
Grade	93	17	303	6,598	86.80	28	30.11%
All Second Class	331	64	320*	22,664	84.80	94	28.40%
Grand Total	669	107	452*	50,731	90.27	211	31.54%

Bradman still holds the following significant records for Test match cricket:

• Highest career batting average (minimum 15 innings): 99.94
• Highest series batting average (5-Test series): 201.50 (1931-32)
• Highest % of centuries in innings played: 36.25%
• Highest 5th wicket partnership: 405 (with Sid Barnes, 1946-47)
• Highest 6th wicket partnership: 346 (with Jack Fingleton, 1936-37)
• Highest score by a number 5 batsman: 304 (1934)
• Highest score by a number 7 batsman: 270 (1936-37)
• Most runs against one opponent: 5,028 (v England)
• Most runs in one series: 974 (1930)
• Most centuries scored in a single session of play: 6 (1 pre lunch, 2 lunch-tea, 3 tea-stumps)

• Most runs in one day’s play: 309 (1930)
• Most double centuries: 12
• Most double centuries in a series: 3 (1930)
• Most triple centuries: 2 (equal with Brian Lara)
• Most consecutive matches to have made a century: 6 (last 3 in 1936-37, first 3 in 1938)

Context

In a sport that revels in statistics, the figure 99.94 has become one of cricket's most famous, iconic statistics.

Contextualising Bradman's achievement is easier than is usual for comparisons of cricket statistics across the eras. Compared to his average of almost 100, no other player who has played more than 20 Test match innings has finished his career with a Test average of more than 61 (see the list of highest Test career batting averages).

Bradman scored centuries at a rate better than one every three innings. He converted very nearly a third of his centuries into double hundreds, and his total of 37 first-class double hundreds is the most achieved by any batsman. The next highest total is Walter Hammond's, who scored 36 double hundreds but played in exactly 400 more matches than Bradman's 234.

For decades, Bradman was the only player to have scored two Test triple centuries (both against England at Headingley, 334 in 1930 and 304 in 1934). This feat was surpassed by West Indian Brian Lara in 2004 when he hit a quadruple century, having earlier made a score of 375 (Lara, however, played more than twice as many Tests). Bradman very nearly reached 300 on another occasion, his last partner being run out when he was on 299 not out against South Africa in 1932. Bradman, Lara and Bill Ponsford are the only players with three first class scores of over 350.

In a biographical essay in Wisden, he is hailed as "the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games."

In The Best of the Best, statistician Charles Davis argues that Bradman's performance is the most dominant of any player of any major sport. He analyses the statistics for several prominent sportsmen by comparing the number of standard deviations above the mean for their sport. The top performers in his selected sports are:

Athlete	Sport	Statistic	Standard deviations	Probability against (1/x)
Bradman	Cricket	Batting average	4.4	184,000
Pelé	Football (Soccer)	Goals per game	3.7	9,300
Ty Cobb	Baseball	Batting average	3.6	6,300
Jack Nicklaus	Golf	Major titles	3.5	4,300
Michael Jordan	Basketball	Points per game	3.4	3,000

This means, using the above criterion, that one would expect someone of Bradman's calibre to appear once in 184,000 batsmen, compared with once in only 9,300 football players for the next most highly rated person, Pelé. It is possible that Bradman's statistics would be even more extreme if extra deviation created by non-batting specialists were taken into account.

In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of 0.392, while a basketball player would need to score 43 points per game. For comparison, Michael Jordan holds the NBA record with an average of 30.1 points per game, while Ty Cobb's career batting average of .366 from 1928 still stands as the MLB high mark.

Family Life

Bradman first met Jessie Martha Menzies (born 11 June 1909 in Bowral) in 1920, when she came to board with the Bradman family to be closer to school in Bowral. In his 1996 interview with Ray Martin, Bradman said that for him, it was love at first sight and that he was determined to marry her. On 30 April 1932, the couple wed at St Paul’s Anglican Church at Burwood, Sydney.

During their 65-year marriage, Jessie was the most influential person in Bradman’s life. Her gregariousness contrasted sharply with her husband’s taciturn nature. Charles Williams dedicated his biography of Bradman to Jessie, calling her “shrewd, reliable, selfless, and above all, uncomplicated…she was the perfect foil to his concentrated, and occasionally mercurial character”. Numerous times Bradman paid tribute to his wife, once saying succinctly, “I would never have achieved what I achieved without Jessie”.

File:PrivateDon.jpg

This collection of Bradman's private letters published in 2004 has given researchers new insights into Bradman's personal life.

The Bradmans lived in the same modest, suburban house in Holden Street, Kensington Park (Adelaide) for all but the first three years of their married life. They experienced much personal tragedy in raising their children. Their first-born son died less than 48 hours after he was born. Their second son, John Russell (born 10 July 1939) contracted polio during an epidemic of the disease that swept Adelaide in the summer of 1951-52. Daughter Shirley June (born 17 April 1941) was born with cerebral palsy. Bradman attempted to keep his children away from the limelight as much as possible.

However, the burden of his family name proved too great for John Bradman to handle. After studying law and qualifying as a barrister, he changed his last name to Bradsen by deed poll in 1972. He went on to a distinguished career as a lecturer in law at Adelaide University. Although claims were made that he became estranged from his father, it was more a matter of “the pair inhabit[ing] different worlds”.After his death, a collection of personal letters written by Bradman to his close friend Rohan Rivett between 1953 and 1977was released and gave researchers new insights into Bradman’s family life. The letters detail the strain between father and son.

Bradman’s reclusiveness in later life is partly attributable to the on-going health problems of his wife. Jessie had open-heart surgery in her sixties and followed by a hip replacement. Later, she fought leukaemia, which eventually took her life on 14 September 1997. This had a dispiriting effect on Bradman, but the upside was a strengthening of his relationship with his son. The pair became much closer in Bradman’s last years and John resolved to change his name back to Bradman. Since his father’s death, John Bradman has become the spokesperson for the family and has been involved in defending Bradman in a number of disputes about the Bradman legacy.

The relationship between Bradman and his parents and siblings is less clear. Little biographical information on them is available from the period after Bradman moved to Adelaide. Nine months after Bradman’s death, his nephew Paul Bradman criticised him as a “snob” and a “loner’ who forgot his connections in Bowral, and who failed to attend the funerals of his mother and father.Both the Bradman foundation and his son defended his reputation in the media.

Bradman in Literature

On page 184 of his 2004 book "The A-Z of Bradman", Alan Eason claims that Bradman has been the subject of more biographies than any other Australian, apart from the outlaw Ned Kelly. Bradman authored four books himself:

• Don Bradman’s Book: The Story of My Cricketing Life with Hints on Batting, Bowling and Fielding – published by Hutchinson in 1930
• My Cricketing Life – published by Stanley Paul in 1938
• Farewell to Cricket – published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1950, later re-published by ETT Imprint in 1994
• The Art of Cricket – published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1958, later re-published by ETT Imprint in 1998

The following is a list of books that encompasses biographies, pictorial essays, artworks and anthologies that have been written about Bradman and his cricketing career:

• Bradman by AG Moyes, Harrap 1948
• Bradman: An Australian Hero by Charles Williams, Little, Brown 1996
• Bradman and the Bodyline Series by Ted Docker, Angus & Robertson (UK) 1978
• Bradman the Great by BJ Wakley, Nicholas Kaye of London, 1959
• Bradman: The Illustrated Biography by Michael Page, Macmillan 1983
• Bradman Revisited – The Legacy of Sir Donald Bradman by AL Shillinglaw and Brian Hale, The Parrs Wood Press 2003
• Bradman’s Band by Ashley Mallett, UQP 2000
• Bradman; What They Said About Him edited by Barry Morris, ABC Books 1995
• Don Bradman by Philip Lindsay, Phoenix House 1951
• Farewell to Bradman: A Final Tribute edited by Peter Allen, Pan Macmillan Australia 2001
• Images of Bradman by Peter Allen and James Kemsley, Allen Kemsley Publishing 1994
• Our Don Bradman edited by Philip Derriman, Macmillan Australia 1987
• Remembering Bradman edited by Margaret Geddes, Penguin Group (Australia) 2002
• Sir Donald Bradman: A Biography by Irving Rosenwater, Batsford 1978
• The Bradman Albums drawn from the collection held by the State Library of South Australia, Rigby 1987
• The A-Z of Bradman by Alan Eason, ABC Books 2004
• The Don: A Biography of Sir Donald Bradman by Roland Perry, Macmillan 1995
• The Don – A Photographic Essay of a Legendary Life by Michael Page and Des Fregan, Sun-Macmillan 1988
• The Private Don by Christine Wallace, Allen & Unwin 2004
• Wisden on Bradman edited by Graeme Wright, Hardie Grant Books 1998
• The Art of Bradman text by Richard Mulvaney, Artwork by Brian Clinton, Funtastic Ltd. 2003

Trivia

A statue of Bradman at the Melbourne Cricket Ground

• Bradman is immortalised in three popular songs of very different styles and eras, "Our Don Bradman", a jaunty 1930s ditty by Jack O'Hagan, "Bradman" by Paul Kelly in the 1980s, and in "Sir Don", an emotional tribute by Australian Singer John Williamson at Bradman's Memorial Service.

• Bradman himself recorded several songs accompanying himself and others on piano in the early 1930s including Every Day Is A Rainbow Day For Me.

• The story of the Bodyline series was embroidered in a 1984 television drama mini-series in which Hugo Weaving played Douglas Jardine and Gary Sweet played Don Bradman.

• The name "Bradman" is now protected in Australia, in that it cannot be used as a part of a trademark except for government-approved institutions linked to Donald Bradman.

• A main arterial road in Adelaide, South Australia, formerly Burbridge Road, was renamed Sir Donald Bradman Drive.

• A popular story is that Sir Charles Moses, General Manager of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and personal friend of Bradman asked that Bradman's Test batting average be immortalised as the post office box number of the ABC. The ABC's mailing address in every capital city of Australia is PO Box 9994. There is some debate about whether the story is true, but ABC sports host Karen Tighe confirms that the number was in fact chosen in honour of Bradman, and the claim is also supported by Alan Eason in his book The A-Z of Bradman. However, the broadcaster was not assigned the box number until after Moses's successor, Sir Talbot Duckmanton, had retired.

• Bradman played in several cricketing nations but never in New Zealand or India.

• Bradman played all of his first class cricket in Australia and England

• After Bradman's death, the Australian Government produced a commemorative 20 cent coin in his honour.

• For the attack against the Germans on Monte Cassino, Italy in the Second World War, the coded message to launch the attack was "Bradman is batting tomorrow".

• The mathematician, G. H. Hardy, an avid cricket fan, once declared the German mathematician David Hilbert "the Don Bradman of mathematics,".

• Although famously a teetotaller during his playing days, in later life Bradman liked to drink wine with his food, and enjoyed an occasional brandy or scotch. He had a liking for Henshcke Hill of Grace, a well known South Australian shiraz.

References

Bradman, Don (1950): Farewell to Cricket, 1988 Pavilion Library reprint. ISBN 1 85145 225 7.

Cashman, Richard et al. - editors (1996): The Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0 19 553575 8.

Coleman, Robert (1993): Seasons In the Sun: the Story of the Victorian Cricket Association, Hargreen Publishing Company. ISBN 0 949905 59 3.

Davis, Charles (2000): The Best Of the Best: A New Look at the Great Cricketers and Changing Times, ABC Books. ISBN 0 733308 99 6.

Dunstan, Keith (1988, rev. ed.): The Paddock That Grew, Hutchinson Australia. ISBN 0 09 169170 2.

Eason, Alan (2004): The A-Z of Bradman, ABC Books. ISBN 0 7333 1517 8.

Egan, Jack (1987): The Story of Cricket in Australia, Macmillan Australia. ISBN 0 333 43095 6.

Fingelton, Jack (1949): Brightly Fades the Don, 1985 Pavilion Library reprint. ISBN 0 907516 69 6.

Frith, David (2002): Bodyline Autopsy, ABC Books. ISBN 0 7333 1321 3.

Harte, Chris (1993): A History of Australian Cricket, Andre Deutsch. ISBN 0 233 98825 4.

Haigh, Gideon (1993): The Cricket War - the Inside Story of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket, Text Publishing Company. ISBN 1 86372 027 8.

Headon, David - editor (2001): The Best Ever Australian Sports Writing, Black Inc. ISBN 1 86395 266 7.

O'Reilly (1985): Tiger - 60 Years of Cricket, William Collins. ISBN 0 00 217477 4.

Page, Michael (1983): Bradman - The Illustrated Biography, Macmillan Australia. ISBN 0 333 35619 5.

Perry, Roland (1995): The Don – A Biography of Sir Donald Bradman, Macmillan. ISBN 0 73290827 2.

Robinson, Ray (1981 rev. ed.): On Top Down Under, Cassell Australia. ISBN 0 7269 7281 5.

Robinson, Ray (1985): After Stumps Were Drawn, Collins. ISBN 0 00 216583 X.

Rosenwater, Irving (1978): Sir Donald Bradman – A Biography, Batsford. ISBN 0 71 340664 X.

Swanton, EW (2000): EW Swanton – A Celebration of His Life and Work, Richard Cohen Books. ISBN 1 86066 179 3.

Wallace, Christine (2004): The Private Don, Allen & Unwin. ISBN 9 78174175 1581.

Whitington, RS (1974): The Book of Australian Test Cricket 1877-1974, Wren Publishing. ISBN 0 85885 197 0.

Williams, Charles (1996): Bradman: An Australian Hero, 2001 Abacus reprint. ISBN 0 3491 1475 7.

Wisden Cricketers Almanack: various editions, accessed at http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/

External links

• Don Bradman at ESPNcricinfo
• Bradman Digital Library - State Library of South Australia
• The Bradman Trail
• Bradman Museum and Bradman Oval - Bowral, New South Wales
• Sir Donald Bradman Tribute Section
• Obituary in Wisden by EW Swanton
• BBC tribute to Bradman
• ABC tribute to Bradman
• Bradman and the British
• Bradman's career as a selector
• Video footage of Bradman in full flight

Template:Australian batsmen with a Test batting average above 50