What Bradman's birthday means to the Indian cricket fan

Sir Donald Bradman turns 92 today. He was 92 not out innumerable times during his playing career and today he is unbeaten on 92 in life. Bradman was never out in the 90s during his 80 innings in Test cricket, a tribute to his unique skill and temparament. Whenever he got to 90, a hundred was taken for granted. Will Bradman perform the same feat in real life too?

During his playing days, Bradman's fan mail was unprecedented. Letters with just part of his face visible and marked `playing somewhere in England' reached him. Another letter just marked `To Don Bradman, Australia - please help me. I don't know the address' also reached its destination. The fan mail continued even after his playing days were over and continue till today, 52 years after he played his last Test.

Much of the fan mail emanates from India, a country in which he enjoys fanatical following. Keeping in mind the fact that numerically - because of the country's population - Indian cricket fans are the biggest in the world, it is fair to assume that the majority of the fan mail for Bradman will be from the sub continent.

Bradman's cricketing contacts with India are rather limited. He played in only one series against an Indian team in 1947-48. He spent perhaps only a few hours in India when he made a stop over with Lady Bradman in Calcutta in the mid fifties. But his deeds are well known and he maintains the super celebrity status he enjoys in every other major cricketing country.

Bradman on his part has always had a soft corner for India and cricketers from this land. In his autobiography `Farewell to cricket' he says that the series against India was one of the most enjoyable in his career and a wonderful spirit of camaraderie existed between players of both sides. He also pays handsome tribute to players like Amarnath, Hazare, Phadkar and Mankad. In 1985-86, while presenting Sunil Gavaskar with a memento, he described the Indian batting maestro as an ornament to the game. And only a few years ago, he described Sachin Tendulkar as the one whose playing style and approach closely resembled his.

Any news about Bradman even now is reported faithfully and featured prominently in the Indian media - even the recent unhappy events where there have been a couple of controversies about using his name. When Bradman turned 90 two years ago, newspapers and magazines in this country highlighted the event prominently with special articles and features. When a news agency put out a story on August 14, 1998 that it was fifty years since Bradman's last innings in Test cricket - his famous last duck at the Oval - publications across the country again carried it prominently. Bradman has guarded his private life carefully and has not been known to give interviews. And so when two young intrepid journalists from Calcutta, Debashish Dutta and Gautam Bhattacharya finally made it to the great man's home in Adelaide and interviewed him around a decade ago, it became an Indian media event.

Some of the most profound things said and written about Bradman have been made by Indians. And perhaps the most significant of them has been the remark of Gavaskar. Congratulated on his record 30th century at Madras in December 1983, when he surpassed Bradman's long standing mark of 29 hundreds in Test cricket, Gavaskar was quick to shrug off the `record' tag. ``Bradman's tally is still the record. It will only be surpassed if a batsman gets 30 hundreds in 52 Tests,'' was the gist of what the Indian batsman said. Incidentally, Gavaskar got his 30th hundred in his 99th Test and that was why he wanted to set the `record' straight.