Cult Heroes: Sir Donald Bradman

Australia thrives on sporting legends. And sure enough, there has been a production line throughout their history that has never once been in anything less than rude health.

We Brits look on in awe, not quite as backseat passengers but only ever riding shotgun; the Aussies can’t be budged from the driving seat.

Nick Faldo? I’ll raise you a Greg Norman. For all the precocious talent Andy Murray has, the number of grand slam wins he possesses is distinctly rounder than Mr Leyton Hewitt’s. Ian Thorpe is as close to a genetically engineered dolphin as will ever be seen in the Commonwealth. Even Dame Kelly Holmes cannot be elevated to a tier of her own, the shadow of Cathy Freeman looming large, and Swanny ain’t quite Warney. “Not bad for a bunch of convicts,” a slightly xenophobic resident of these isles may grumble.

Of course, there is no effect without cause. The pulsating drive, the will-to-win, that thirst for betterment cannot be bottled, but there is one man in Australia’s short and deliciously sweet past that carried sport from the frivolity of a pastime to the very core of the nation’s soul.

Donald Bradman was born into a humble household in Cootamundra, New South Wales, in which primary concerns were making ends meet rather than having enough time left in the day to pursue a hobby.

Yet Donald, with as little as a golf ball, a water tank and his cherished cricket stump, did not so much pursue as feverishly obsess over the game. Hours upon hours would be spent in his agricultural pocket of Australia, smashing the ball against the tank for it to ricochet in all directions honing his agility, footwork and co-ordination.

Bearing in mind the stump that was used – one of three that forms a wicket – was a mere inch in diameter, one can begin to grasp the sheer talent that was cultivated, day after day, week after week ad nauseam. It is tantamount to tennis players using ping-pong paddles to sharpen their accuracy, yet this was Bradman’s first experience of cricket. He had jumped in at the deep end, and was not satisfied in just treading water.

Bradman soon showcased his repertoire in proper form, pulverizing high-school cricket in Bowral by the age of 12. Centuries flowed, schoolchildren rejoiced.

Whilst a whole slew of scouts in the modern world would be coaxing such a phenom with the promise of riches, in 1920 sport didn’t quite work in that way. You want success? Earn it. You come to us.

And so he did: if it wasn’t for the unrivalled determination to be the best, the name of Donald Bradman would have been lost in dusty records as a lowly estate agent in the Southern Highlands.

This ambition and a sympathetic employer led him to carry on with his sporting pursuits after he had left high school, even so far as developing an interest in tennis that temporarily succeeded that of his first love.

But perhaps it was the memory of the statement that he had made, after first visiting the hallowed Sydney Cricket Ground in his schooling days, that renewed his cricketing endeavours: “I shall never be satisfied”, he told his father, “until I play on this ground”. And so he would. After impressing in trials held in Sydney, an eighteen-year-old Bradman began his ascent up the cricketing ladder by travelling the eighty miles from his hometown each week to turn out in grade cricket for St George. “The Boy from Bowral” added to his mystique by achieving a hundred on debut, inevitably going on to catch the eye of the test selectors for the Ashes.

If the tale up to now has been curiously too perfect, this is the part where Bradman’s adventure hits a snag.

With only ten first-class matches under his belt, Bradman was tossed into the first test in a case of sink rather than swim. Both innings garnered a score of 18 and 1 respectively, and whilst the whole team were culpable for the disaster, the fallout rather predictably landed on the debutant. Dropped for the second test, any young man would be forgiven for his confidence deserting him.

His recall for the third test, however, dispelled any doubts over his propulsion to the highest level of cricket, becoming the youngest player to hit a test century – against no less than the irrepressible English.

Bradman was indeed a flash in the pan, for Australia had unearthed their greatest sporting jewel in amongst the chaff that was to be their eventual hammering over the series. The battle had been lost, but the war that was waged upon international cricket over the next couple of decades with Bradman at the helm changed the sport forever.

The sport evolved out of its primitive doldrums, both in tandem with Bradman’s techniques and as a response to them – as England’s infamous “Bodyline” bowling tactic, specifically designed to counter the Don, attests to. That, however, is for a different story. This one is about how a boy, from Bowral, armed with a bat, ascended to the annals of history.