Bradman's second 1948 baggy green found

Don Bradman in one of his baggy greens © Getty Images

A baggy green cap belonging to Sir Donald Bradman has been donated to the Bradman Collection in the South Australian state library. It's the first one that the Collection will be able to put on display permanently as others have only been loans, albeit long-term.

Popular opinion had held that there was only one baggy green given to each player in 1948. As that was Bradman's last tour of England and his side finished undefeated, the value of those baggy greens is higher, especially Bradman's one itself. But the sale of one of them last year set in train events that brought forward the other. An Australian collector purchased one for A$400,000 (about £167,000), and it was after publicity of this that the second, kept on display in the pavilion at Haileybury College near London, was eventually returned to Australia.

Bradman gave his second baggy green from the 1948 tour to Owen Truscott for helping with his arrangements at the London branch of the Union Bank, and his son, Kevin had lent it to his old alma mater Haileybury in 1991. But after the auctioning of the first cap and the publicity of its value, Haileybury felt unable to the display, or keep, the cap securely and contacted Truscott.

It was at his point that Kevin, now a retired lawyer from Melbourne, brought attention to the second cap to the Bradman Collection. After consulting with other 1948 tourists, Sam Loxton and Ron Hammence, Barry Gibbs, the manager of the Bradman Collection, had strong anecdotal evidence that there were two caps given to players in 1948. Gibbs then came across the contracts for that tour and had a closer look: they revealed that all the players had indeed been presented two, as had been the case in some later tours. And so Bradman's second cap is now back in Australia, suurounded by more Bradman memoriabilia than anywhere else.

Wearing a baggy green today has a near-spiritual significance, and adds to any occasion. Thus Michael Clarke discarded his helmet for a baggy green as he approached his first Test hundred last month at Bangalore, following the lead of Matthew Hayden who did the same at Perth at the end of last year when he overtook Brian Lara's then Test record of 375.