Was Bradman just born special?
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Ken Kelly/Wisden Cricket Monthly
Philip Derriman, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, tries to find out what made Bradman so special.
It is the one question about Bradman that continues to fascinate. Few people today could care less about the various controversies that surrounded him during his lifetime. Whether he leaked this or that story to the press. Whether he was anti-Catholic. Whether he disliked Bill O'Reilly as much as O'Reilly disliked him.
But many people remain extremely interested in how, statistically, he managed to be almost twice as good as the next best. What was his secret? Physical talent? Mental strength? Or was he in some indefinable way, as Geoff Boycott wondered, just born special?
The Australian’s Peter Lalor considers whether Bradman’s incredible innings will ever end. “Even now he bats and bats and bats ...”
In the BBC, England's Alec Bedser recalls his encounters with Bradman, both on and off the field. He speaks of how Bradman shunned publicity and disowned the friends who auctioned off memorabilia and letters.
"He used to write me letters. Some people would try to sell them, but I never could betray a confidence and never told anyone what he said. I know Donnie. He wouldn't think much of some of the people who have tried to sell letters he wrote to them. It's terrible, I think, and that was his point immediately. He says 'I've finished with you', that's what his reaction would be, unless they sold them for charity. He wouldn't have minded that so much.
Chloe Saltau, writing in the Age, takes a look at “Bradmania” and the commercial dilemmas over the use of his name.
Behind the thick haze of nostalgia, though, the keepers of the Bradman flame are anxious. Anxious not only that the Bradman legend long outlives such national treasures as Sam Loxton and Arthur Morris, but also about the manner in which Sir Donald, a reluctant celebrity in his own time, should be packaged and sold to a new generation.
In the same paper Morris, the opening batsman on the 1948 tour of England, talks about his former team-mate while saying “modesty seems to have disappeared” from the game.
In the Australian Tom Burgess, 87, tells about the day he ran-out Bradman. “I thought the whole world had collapsed," Burgess said. “I hit it and ran. I called and ran ... I still reckon there was a run in it. I made it easily."
In the Telegraph, Neil Harvey recounts his experiences with Bradman during the Invincibles Tour in 1948.
"He never offered any advice, but early in the tour I was struggling, so I asked my room-mate, Sammy Loxton, to ask the boss what I was doing wrong. Sammy had a chat with the boss and he came back and told me that Don said, 'Tell your mate that if he keeps the ball on the ground then he can't get out'.
Angus Fraser, in the Independent, pays a tribute to Bradman.
It was at the 1994-95 Adelaide Test that I met him for the only time, bumping in to him next to the committee room as I was going for lunch. When he introduced himself to me I couldn't get over how small he was. He was tiny, but there was an aura about him that very few people have.
In the Times, Christopher-Martin Jenkins feels that Bradman would have been a champion of any era.
His speed of foot and eye, as well as modern bats, would have enabled him to compensate for a slight physique. His preference for keeping the ball on the ground would either have been tempered by a decision to hit some balls for six - there was never so calculating a batsman - or by his skill in finding gaps in the field with full-blooded strokes played late. He would have handled the modern media without relish but shrewdly and articulately.
The Mumbai Mirror lists 50 interesting facts and trivia on Bradman.
Meanwhile Partab Ramchand recalls Bradman's Indian connection. He writes in his column on dreamcricket.com:
He played just one Test series against the Indians in 1947-48 taking his customary toll by aggregating 715 runs in the five Tests at an average of 178.75, with three hundreds and a double hundred. He hit a century in each innings the only time he accomplished the feat during his 52-Test career. It was also against the touring Indian side that he notched up his 100th hundred in first class cricket playing for the Australian XI at Sydney, an experience he described as "my most exhilarating moment on the field".
In the Hindu Vijay Lokapally gets some Indian cricketers to talk of their correspondence and meetings with Bradman.
“The real Don wants to meet you,” was how Sunil Gavaskar prodded Sandeep Patil at the Adelaide Oval in the 1981 Test. “I was 150 batting and had not even taken my pads off. I forgot everything about my knock and just rushed to see the god of batting. There he was, a humble man, standing at the door of the dressing room. I was told that he had sought permission to enter the Indian dressing room. What humility! I remember he said something like ‘I enjoyed your knock’. “Well, as far as I was concerned, I just held his hand and kept looking at him. Nothing else mattered. I had shaken hands with the greatest cricketer the world had ever seen.”
Peter English is former Australasia editor of ESPNcricinfo