Sir Donald Bradman - Telegraph
Obituaries
Sir Donald Bradman
Sir Donald Bradman, who has died aged 92, was on any reference to averages by    far the greatest batsman who has ever lived; so marked, indeed, was his    pre-eminence that he became one of the great sporting legends of the 20th    century, standing forth not merely as a national hero in Australia, but as a    phenomenon for all the cricketing world to wonder at.
12:00AM GMT 27 Feb 2001
When The Don walked out to bat in his last Test match, at the Oval in 1948, his average in Tests was 101.39. Applauded all the way to the wicket, and given three cheers by the English team, he was then bowled for a duck second ball by a googly from Eric Hollies.
So Bradman ended with a Test batting average of 99.94 from 52 Tests, a surprisingly small number by modern standards. (Allan Border played in 156 Test matches between 1978 and 1994.) Bradman played 338 innings in first-class matches, and made 28,067 runs with an average of 95.14.
This total included 117 centuries, so that he scored a hundred slightly more than one in every three times he went out to bat. He would have made many more had he not lost so much of his prime to the Second World War. For more than eight years, between the Test at Headingley in July 1938 and the first at Brisbane in late 1946, he played no Test innings at all.
Among those batsmen who have completed their careers and played in more than 20 Test innings, the next best averages are those of Graeme Pollock, George Headley and Herbert Sutcliffe, who all finished with an average of 60, some 40 runs behind Bradman. It is difficult to think of any other field of endeavour in which the best is so much better than the merely excellent.
On the other hand, Bradman was never a particularly elegant player, nor a classically orthodox one. He was, after all, entirely self-taught, and had been brought up on concrete wickets covered with matting; he did not bat on a grass wicket until he was 18 (and then, of course, he made a century).
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In these circumstances Bradman had developed an unusual grip, which he steadfastly refused to change. The right hand was twisted to the right so that as the palm gripped the handle it was facing nearly directly down the pitch. The left hand was turned so that its back faced the bowler.
As Bradman took up his stance the leading edge of the bat pointed almost towards the bowler, while its bottom rested between, not behind, his feet. He took the bat up at an angle of 45 degrees to the flight of the ball. This set-up made him particularly strong in the hook, the pull and the cut. He said his grip made it impossible to lift the hook shot unless he tried to; and he was equally safe with the cut. More extraordinarily, given his grip, he also developed an effective off-drive.
On the debit side, it was argued, the grip handicapped him on wet wickets where there was sharp turn. But then his footwork was so sprightly that he could usually smother spin.
It goes without saying that Bradman was quick and accurate in his judgment of length and speed, possessed the sharpest reflexes, and was gifted with perfect hand-eye co-ordination. But he was not alone in these qualities. What made him wholly exceptional were his inner confidence, his determination to dominate an attack, and his ability to sustain total concentration over a long innings.
Jim Laker used to tell how, at Lord's in 1948, he tied Bradman up for an over and was only prevented by the faintest edge from claiming him LBW. "Well bowled, Jim," Bradman said at the end of the over. "Thank goodness that's over. Now we can get on with some batting." He hit the first ball of Laker's next over for four and was never in trouble again.
On strike, Bradman would be entirely still, not even tapping his bat. Often he was grinning - cynically, as many bowlers came to feel. "As I ran up to bowl," Jim Laker has recorded, "Bradman always seemed to know where the ball was going to pitch, what stroke he was going to play and how many runs he was going to score."
Only at the start of an innings did Bradman appear vulnerable. Once he had settled, his instinct was not just to attack the bowling but to tear it to pieces. Scoring fast was almost as important to him as scoring high, and over his career he averaged 42 runs an hour. His dominance at the crease was the more remarkable as he was only 5ft 8in tall, and used a light bat.
No mercy was shown to tired or indifferent performers. "He pitied none," wrote Learie Constantine, the great West Indian fast bowler. "If he can make any bowler look foolish, he will do it." And no matter what the heat, or the pressure, Bradman would always appear entirely cool, with not a drop of sweat.
Off the pitch he was neither falsely modest nor arrogantly boastful. Unwilling to talk about himself, he was always ready with praise of other players. Yet he was never one of the boys. Teetotal and a non-smoker, when possible he avoided rowdy celebration, although as a talented pianist he was sometimes roped in to accompany sing-songs. After he made 309 not out on the first day of the Test match at Headingley in 1930, against an attack including Larwood and Tate, he went up to his room to listen to music and write letters.
Some of his team-mates resented this attitude. In particular, the Irish and Roman Catholic members of Australia's side in the 1930s - Jack Fingleton and Bill O'Reilly to the fore - took exception to the tight, dedicated, Empire-loving, Royalty-idolising, aristocrat-adulating genius under whose shadow they lay.
"A churlish little man," Fingleton called Bradman in 1980, all passion clearly not spent. And E W Swanton noted that, when Bradman was out for nought in his last Test, "I thought they [Fingleton and O'Reilly] were going to have a stroke, they were laughing so much".
Outwardly, Bradman could afford to disdain such critics, though in old age he rather curiously let it be known that when the Irish players arrived at Melbourne station, "they were met by a bunch of priests in cassocks". In the light of this antagonism, O'Reilly's tribute, that Bradman was "the greatest cricketer ever to put boots on and walk on to a cricket field", gains added force.
Yet the isolating intensity with which Bradman played exacted its cost. Throughout the 1930s he was plagued by curiously ill-defined health problems, no doubt caused by the tremendous pressure to which he was subject. In Australia a Bradman failure, such as when he was bowled first ball by Bowes at Melbourne in 1932, was a national disaster. Bradman's will, toughness and grit saw him through. And he was shrewd enough, in between making his centuries, to ensure a measure of financial security outside cricket.
Donald George Bradman was born at Cootamundra, 200 miles south-west of Sydney, on August 27 1908. He was the fifth of five children, and four years younger than his brother Victor, the fourth child. The first three children had been daughters.
His father's family had originally hailed from Withersfield, just inside Suffolk on the border with Cambridgeshire, where the path to the church door is lined with Bradnams. In 1833, the son of John Bradnam was christened, whether intentionally or by error, Charles Bradman. This Charles, an agricultural labourer, emigrated to Australia in 1852, settling at Mittagong, 80 miles south of Sydney. He married a local girl, and set about earning enough money to buy his own land.
In 1874 he fulfilled this ambition by moving 150 miles west to Jindalee (near Cootamundra), where property was cheaper. Two years later his third child, George, Don Bradman's father, was born. At 17 George married Emily Whatman, from a rather better-off farming family. Emily's brother George was a keen and talented cricketer.
In 1910 George Bradman gave up his farm and moved near to his wife's family in the Mittagong-Bowral area, where he worked as a carpenter. Don Bradman grew up in a weatherboard bungalow, with no water supply. Often left to his own devices, he satisfied his sporting instincts by throwing a golf ball against the brick base of a water tank, attempting (and usually succeeding) to hit it with a stump as it rebounded. He practised fielding by throwing his golf ball at the bars in a gate - which meant tedious retrieval if he missed.
At Bowral High School, Don found that he invariably came third in class. But when, aged 12, he played for the school team against their rivals at Mittagong, he made an undefeated 115 in a total of 155.
Two years later, in 1921, he was given a chance in Bowral Town senior team. Still in shorts, and using a bat far too large for him, he went in at Number 10, and made 39 not out. Shortly afterwards his father took him for the first time to Sydney, where they watched Charlie Macartney take 170 off England. Don left school at 14, commended by his headmaster as "truthful, honest, industrious, and an unusually bright lad", and began work in an estate agency in Bowral. In 1923-24 he played no cricket at all, and very little in the following summer. Most of his free time was given to tennis.
It was his uncle George Whatman who lured him back to play cricket for Bowral. In December 1925 the town played their local rivals from Wingello, the match taking place on successive Saturday afternoons. The opposition had a demon bowler, nearly three years older than Bradman: Bill O'Reilly, no less. At the close of play on the first Saturday Bradman was 234 not out - though he was bowled first ball by O'Reilly when he resumed his innings the following week. In the next match he made 300 against Moss Vale.
Word of these deeds travelled to Sydney, and in October 1926 the New South Wales selectors invited the prodigy for a trial. He impressed, and in December 1927 made his debut for the state in a match against South Australia at Adelaide. Going in at No 7, he treated Clarrie Grimmett, one of the greatest of all leg spinners, with scant respect, and duly completed his century.
His debut in Test cricket came against England at Brisbane in 1928. For once he failed to do himself justice, and was dropped for the second Test. Returning for the third at Melbourne, he made 79 and 112, and then hit another century in the fifth match of the series. In between he hammered Victoria's attack for 340 not out.
In 1930 Bradman flayed Queensland's bowlers to amass 452 not out, which for almost 30 years remained the highest score in first-class cricket.
There were seasoned English players - Maurice Tate, Frank Woolley and Percy Fender among them - who felt that Bradman's frequently cross-batted attacking style could never succeed so well on English wickets. Bradman gave his response in the Test series of 1930, when he scored 974 runs (still a record) and averaged 139.14 without the benefit of a single Not Out.
He rated his 254 at Lord's that year as the best innings he ever played; every shot, he said, went exactly where intended, even the one from which he was caught; he had only forgotten that Percy Chapman was so tall. His 334 in the next Test at Headingley remains the highest score by an Australian against England.
Nemesis came in the form of the bodyline tactics employed by Douglas Jardine when England toured Australia in 1932-33. Larwood and Voce fired in short-pitched deliveries aimed at the body and head with a cluster of short legs to take the catch as the batsman tried to fend the ball off. Larwood, of course was one of the fastest bowlers of all time, and he was reinforced by the ruthlessness of Jardine, who required his players to refer to Bradman as "the little bastard".
After early failures, Bradman found a solution. "He ran to the off or [more often] out to the leg to get away from those head-high whistling balls," wrote Walter Hammond, "and he played golf shots and overhead lawn tennis shots, and from one after another the ball went crashing to the pickets. That was sheer courage."
Nevertheless England succeeded in reducing Bradman's average for the series to 56.57, excellent for any other player who has ever lived, but a comparative failure for him. Australia lost the series 1-4.
Though the Australian players had been given £600 each to tour England in 1930, Bradman was aware, in those years of economic depression, of the need for an income outside cricket. Earlier he had publicised sporting equipment; and in 1931 he signed up with a newspaper and radio group in Sydney. He also engaged in some sharp battles with the Australian Board of Control over his right to earn extra money by writing about the tour of 1930.
In 1934 Bradman moved from Sydney to Adelaide to take up a contract for £700 a year offered by a stockbroker called Henry Hodgett. Thereafter he played for South Australia.
During the tour of England in 1934, Bradman (now promoted to vice-captain) was troubled by bad health - to such an extent that he went 13 innings without making a century, before making amends with 304, 244 and 77 in the fourth and fifth Tests.
At the end of the season an abnormally complicated appendix operation left him at death's door. He did not play cricket again for more than a year. Appointed captain of Australia for the 1936-37 season, Bradman got off to a disastrous start, as Australia were heavily defeated in the first two Tests. But thanks to a glut of runs from the skipper, they eventually won the series 3-2.
The Australians retained the Ashes in England in 1938, with Bradman averaging 108.50 in the Tests, and 115.66 for the tour. His 103 in appalling light in the fourth Test at Headingley was one of his finest innings. "Bradman is in such form," wrote Jack Hobbs, "that he could play by candlelight".
Back in Australia he was more prolific than ever in 1938-39. But the war proved an unhappy time for him. Volunteering for the Royal Australian Air Force in 1940, he subsequently transferred to the Army as a supervisor of physical education. But his health broke down. He suffered from muscular trouble and, graver still, his eyesight temporarily worsened, so that his scores in 1940-41 were 0, 6, 0 and 12.
In May 1941 Bradman was discharged from the Army on medical grounds. A frozen shoulder left him unable to lift his right arm. He also lost all feeling in the thumb and index finger of his right hand; it never returned, he wrote in his book Farewell to Cricket (1950).
For the rest of the war Bradman busied himself at the Adelaide stock exchange. But even this proved fraught, as Harry Hodgett, his boss, was imprisoned for fraud in 1945. Bradman worked hard and successfully to restore the position of the firm, which now traded as Don Bradman and Company.
When the England team arrived in Australia in 1946, they thought Bradman looked so ill that he would be better off in a nursing home than on a cricket pitch. But, without recapturing the flair of his pre-war days, Bradman scored 187 in the first Test, and 234 in the second.
England were duly annihilated, and the next season he went on to plunder the Indians for an average of 178.75 in the Tests. Confident in his team, he set off for England in 1948 determined to complete the tour without defeat. The mission was achieved.
On this last tour Bradman decided that his ageing muscles made it too risky to go for the second hundred. Nevertheless, in the fourth Test at Headingley he achieved one of his greatest triumphs, when Australia scored 404 for three wickets in their second innings to win a game they had looked like losing. Bradman's contribution was 173 not out.
After a final three testimonial matches in Australia, Bradman was knighted in 1949. "I would have preferred to remain just Mister," he volunteered. In 1979 he was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia. He was the first Australian to be made a life Vice-President of MCC.
He continued to work as a stockbroker until 1954 when he announced, rather curiously, that his doctor had advised him to retire. His golf handicap was quickly reduced to scratch.
Bradman reported on the Australian tours of England in 1953 and 1956, sitting next to his old enemy Douglas Jardine in the press box at Headingley in 1953. In 1962-63, the Australian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, persuaded him to captain a side against MCC, but to everyone's disappointment he was bowled for four by Brian Statham.
As a delegate to the Imperial Cricket Conference, and (from 1960 to 1963) as chairman of the Australian Board of Control, Bradman helped find a solution, or at least a diplomatic compromise, to the throwing controversy sparked off by the Australians Ian Meckiff and Gordon Rorke, and by the South African Geoff Griffen.
Conscious of the waning appeal of cricket, Bradman urged the Australian team to adopt a more enterprising attitude; the result was the memorable series against the West Indies in 1960-61. Once more chairman of the Board of Control from 1969 to 1972, he was obliged, rather reluctantly, to cancel the South African tour of 1971-72. The series against the Rest of the World which he organised in its stead proved a great success.
Latterly Bradman avoided the limelight. "They usually leave this sort of thing until you are dead," he remarked when a stand was named after him at Sydney in 1974.
Apart from his memoirs, his publications included The Art of Cricket (1958) and The Bradman Album (1988). The Don Declares, taped conversations about his career, was issued in 1988.
Bradman married, in 1932, Jessie Menzies, a childhood friend, who died in 1997. They had a son and a daughter.
Published February 27 2001