Sir Donald George Bradman

Don Bradman has been an unusual victim all his life. He faced a barrage of criticisms from his contemporaries for reasons that were never fully substantiated. He was criticized for being unsocial, for not mixing with his mates as much as they would have liked him to. Yes, Bradman hardly ever went to the pub with the boys after the day’s game was over. The fact that he was a strict teetotaler never seemed to cross the minds of his vehement critics. Even beer, he abhorred. A rare exception would be to have a glass of wine in an ambience of western classical music.

Bradman was hauled over burning coal because of his supposed fondness for wealth. His team-mates harped that he utilized his image to reap huge financial dividends. The fact was that he being the greatest-ever batman in the world induced sponsors and influential people to make a beeline towards him. Bradman never went out of his way to curry favour with anyone. Rather he accepted, on his own highly-principled terms whatever was offered to him. Most appropriately, he received financial bonanzas which were beyond the imagination of his compatriots. No wonder they were jealous of his stature and wealth.

Bradman was thought to be arrogant and standoffish. Quite true, he did not embrace people and make a great show of camaraderie. At the beginning of his career he was extremely shy. Born and brought up in rural surroundings, he took time to settle down to city life in Sydney. His dress, his manner, his rustic background came in for constant bullying from his fellow New South Wales players. Being reticent by nature and quite devoid of city sophistication, he became almost a recluse. He went deep into his shell and would respond only when absolutely necessary.

A massive hullabaloo was made of Bradman’s refusal to meet Lord Tennyson, the former England captain. Tennyson, who never had a high regard for Bradman’s batting ability, once went across to the Australian dressing room to meet Bradman at the end of a day’s game. Bradman, who had just returned to the pavilion after scoring his customary century, informed that he did not wish to meet anyone as he was resting his limbs. This too was considered to be Bradman’s way of insulting another cricketer!

Whatever he did or achieved came in for vindictive verbal reprisals. When he declined to play a Test match because of illness, he was supposed to be avoiding for fear of failure. When he changed his technique to play deliveries directed at his body, he was supposed to be a coward. When he was in earnest conversation with King George VI at the latter’s castle he had casually placed his hand in his pocket. This insignificant act became a headline that Bradman was rude towards the royalty.

If he was scoring heavily and consistently, as he invariably did (Test average 99.94), he was supposed to be hankering for individual records and personal glory. Whenever his team defeated opponents, it was claimed that he had no mercy for the opposition. Bradman never got a moment’s rest during his playing career that stretched for two decades from 1928 to 1948, except the War years. He was perpetually bombarded with vitriol and worse. Ironically the principal detractors were his peers, particularly Victor Richardson (Ian and Greg Chappel’s maternal grandfather), Jack Fingleton and Bill O’Rielly.

During his heydays, some Englishmen said that Don Bradman would never be a Grace or a Ranji or even a Woolley. To this the Australian cricket writer who first highlighted young Don’s immense genius, Johny Moyes replied, “Why should he become a mere mortal. He is and will always be the numero uno among batsmen.”

Even after his cricketing days were over, he never seemed to get the recognition he deserved from the Australian cricketing fraternity. If Keith Miller’s exclusion from the South Africa tour and the overlooking of Miller as the national captain had some validity, there was precious little praise for Bradman’s visionary outlook. He almost single-handedly banned throw bowling from Australian cricket; he encouraged sponsorship deals; he promoted district and school cricket; he formulated innovative laws. Yet he never got any credit.

Despite all the criticisms, the image of the man hardly suffered around the world. In Australia he was voted the most popular personality ahead of prime ministers and film stars. People of all hues and sections from all over the cricketing world held him in highest acclaim. They remembered not only the phenomenal numerical superiority of the man but also the softer elements of his character. He allowed young Bill Edrich to reach the milestone of 1000 runs in May in 1938. On the last day of May if Australia had batted on, Middlesex would have had no scope to bat and Edrich would have had no opportunity to reach the coveted target. The ‘cruel’ Bradman declared Australia’s innings closed so that the young Edrich at least got the chance to aim for the milestone.

It was none other than Bradman who went into raptures about the ability of the Indian cricketers in Australia in 1947-48. India was badly defeated in the Tests, but the supposedly ‘arrogant’ Bradman picked Vijay Hazare, Lala Amarnath and Vinoo Mankad for special mention and painted a positive picture of Indian cricket in general. In his book Farewell to Cricket, he highly praised the India team manager Pankaj Gupta, whom he fondly called ‘Peter Gupta’.

The greatness of Bradman cannot be evaluated by mere statistics. There is a constant fear that the stupendous statistics in his favour would submerge the magic in his batting. He was far, far above any of his contemporaries by any yardstick of evaluation. Similarly he was way ahead of batsmen before and after him by any known perspective. He was and still remains on the highest peak: very singular and very lonely.

His was an amazing career. Hardly any failures ever blotted his genius. In just 80 Test innings he scored no les than 29 centuries, which means for every third visit to the pitch he would get a hundred! These centuries however did also include innumerable double hundreds and two triple centuries. An unique quality of his career has been that his failures invariably attracted attention. So very few were those failures that “Bradman fails” actually became a headline! I doubt if any other sportsman in any other sports arena has ever had such publicity for his failure. No wonder his critics could not stomach his stature.

The greatest tribute paid by the cricket community to Sir Don was the conception, formulation and application of the ‘bodyline’ theory. The aim of ‘bodyline’ theory was to aim fast, rising deliveries at the batsman’s body with the idea to instill fear in him. If the batsman did not lose his wicket out of sheer fright, then he would be exposed to serious injury. The aim was to maim. The target was to achieve victory by whatever means. The history of cricket has never before or after seen anything as dangerous or as disgusting. Cricket during the ‘bodyline’ series was no longer a sport to be enjoyed, but a war to be won.

Since Bradman’s remarkable consistency and high speed of scoring could not be restrained by normal cricketing strategies and techniques, ‘bodyline’ bowling was developed to bring down Bradman to mortal levels. No ‘bodyline’ theory or any particular strategy to injure the batsman was ever devised for Jack Hobbs, Victor Trumper, Sunil Gavaskar, Gary Sobers, Brian Lara or Sachin Tendulkar. It was planned exclusively for the one and only Sir Don. This was the highest accolade that he received.