'Farewell to Bradman' one of the finest cricket books

Farewell to Bradman. Edited by Peter Allen. Published by Macmillan. Price $69.95 (NZ). Reviewed by Lynn McConnell.

If you have missed the chance to buy some of the great books of the past on Sir Donald Bradman this is one not to miss.

And if you have all the others, among them, The Art of Cricket, Farewell to Cricket, How to Play Cricket, the Bradman Albums, Images of Bradman, Bradman by Johnny Moyes, Bradman by Michael Paige, Sir Donald Bradman, A Biography by Irving Rosenwater or even Wisden on Bradman, a collection of all the writings of him, and by him, in Wisden over the years, then this is still a book for you.

It is published by the Bradman Museum, and all proceeds will go to that institution.

What makes this splendid large format book, of the same physical proportions as Images of Bradman, so memorable is the presentation of much of the respect accorded Sir Donald in the world media after his death.

Editorials, front pages, eulogies, prime ministerial tributes and family remembrances are all included to capture the ending of the greatest cricketing life.

The family memories are poignant reminders of the pressure under which Bradman lived his life. His son John, and his grandchildren Greta and Tom, and his friend Jill Gauvin, have all allowed their addresses at the Bradman memorial service in Adelaide to be presented in the book. So too have Richie Benaud, and the Governor-General of Australia, Sir William Deane.

They make memorable reading and capture the Bradman so few people saw.

Then there are the aspects of his career that can never be forgotten. The emergence of the country boy into the world's most prolific batsman, and all the controversies that surrounded that, Bodyline et al.

Throughout the book there are comments, some small, some sizeable, by those who played with and against him, by those who wrote about him, and by those who simply revered him.

One humorous recollection, of several in the book, concerned former England captain, and now Channel Nine commentator, Tony Greig when he was to play in a World XI in Australia against the home team.

The story continues: "Before he left South Africa, his father [Greig's] said to him: 'When you get to Australia you'll meet this man Bradman. Don't say anything. Just listen and learn.' Jet-weary, he and fellow South African Graeme Pollock stopped over in Perth, where out of duty they had to endure a long evening with members of a local cricket supporters' group. Flying on to Adelaide, still jet-weary, they were met at the airport by a 'little old man wearing a grey cardigan.'

"Tony recalls: 'We had no idea who he was and assumed he was from the Adelaide version of the friends of cricket, the sort of people we'd got tangled up with in Perth the night before. We weren't looking forward to that, I can tell you. He suggested a cup of coffee and took off towards the coffee shop carrying our bags while we went off to finalise some arrival formalities.

"When we finally joined him in the coffee shop we still didn't know who he was, so I said: 'Do you have something to do with cricket around here?' The words were hardly out of my mouth when Gary Sobers walked over and said to the little old man in the grey cardigan: 'Sorry I'm late, Sir Donald.' I couldn't believe it. I wish the floor could have swallowed me up."

There's also the memories of Bill Leak, the man commissioned by the Bradman Foundation to paint a portrait of Bradman. His story is another side of the Bradman character.

Various writers, from different stages of cricket's history, have excerpts included in this book, all offering their own version of the man.

One interesting piece is that written by Don Watson in the Sydney Morning Herald on the occasion of Bradman's 80th birthday. He attempted to place Bradman in the Australian pantheon.

He wrote: "Bradman was a sort of Cromwell among cricketers, a relentless, irresistible Protestant presence beating his enemies into dust - as if every bowler was the Antichrist and every ball a craven image he must dutifully pulverise. Every day was a Drogheda...

"...He not only made extraordinary scores, he made them extraordinarily quickly. He regularly made more by himself in a day than we are accustomed to seeing whole teams make in a day-and-a-half.

"Plenty of players have matched Bradman's genius on their day, or have equalled his deeds across a season, but no-one else has been invincible across a 20-year career.

"You don't have a Bradman until you add to the skills a stainless-steel mind. He did far fewer of the human things which undo batsmen so regularly they become cliches: he played fewer careless shots; he did not seem to have bad patches, runs of outs, dips in form or confidence, he was less often distracted, including by his own reflection. Bradman's average tells us less about his skills than his relentless self-control, his will to dominate, the fanatical dimension of his psyche."

And there are the recollections of Bob Radford, the well-known former chief executive of the New South Wales Cricket Association: "I shall never forget asking him once during a most intimate conversation what had made him so great. 'Well' he said, I suppose the others got out more often than I did.' It was not a reply based on modesty, but on fact. That's the way he was. And he wouldn't have had it any other way."

These are just some of the treasures abounding in this book. There is a breakdown of his career, through all its stages. There is the wonderful section from the 1948 tour, originally published in Images of Bradman, where all the players offer their memories of him.

Then there are the photos, so lavishly included in colour and black and white. And there is none better than that on pages 98-99 of Bradman running down the wickets to drive a ball in the nets at Perth in 1932.

The book may be titled Farewell to Bradman, but it might just as well have been titled, The Complete Bradman, because that is exactly what it is.