Wisden commemorates Bradman phenomenon

London: A golf ball, a cricket stump, a brick stand supporting a large water tank, bats fashioned from gum trees and plain dirt pitches.

From these primitive beginnings Australian Don Bradman fashioned a career so extraordinary that the annual Wisden cricket almanac has commemorated the centenary of his birth with the publication of Bradman in Wisden.

Edited by former Wisden editor Graeme Wright, the book collects essays and articles about Bradman accompanied by reports of all his first-class matches.

It is the latter which explain the enduring fascination of Bradman, who died eight years ago.

Bradman averaged 99.94 runs an innings in Tests. In the history of Test cricket the next highest among batsmen who have played more than 30 Test innings is Australian left-hander Michael Hussey, who averaged 68.38 before the current series against India.

Of more importance for spectators, seeking distractions from the Great Depression which gripped the western world, Bradman scored 29 Test centuries in 80 innings, meaning there was around a one-in-three chance of seeing him reach a hundred.

"With Bradman they went to see the hundreds, that's what dragged them through the gates. When Bradman was out everybody got up and left," Wright told Reuters in an interview.

"I don't think Bradman was a particularly attractive batsman, so it was the big scores that attracted people."

Golf Ball

Bradman was self-taught, developing his skills and reflexes as a boy during solitary hours of throwing a golf ball against a brick stand and hitting the rebound with a cricket stump. His first match at the age of 11 took place on a dirt pitch marked out on a football field.

The path into the Australian Test side was swift and Bradman's prodigious scoring in the 1930 series in England, where he scored 974 runs at 139.14, led directly to the infamous 1932-3 series in Australia.

Under instructions from captain Douglas Jardine, who made no secret of his distaste for Australia and Australians, the England fast bowlers headed by Harold Larwood bowled deliberately and consistently short at the batsmen's bodies.

In the short term the tactics worked. England won the series and cut Bradman's average to 56.57.

Bodyline was swiftly outlawed after inflaming Australian public opinion to such an extent that diplomatic relations with England were briefly threatened.

Jardine and his team had arrived at a time when relations between Britain and her dominion were increasingly fraught as finance from the London banks dried up. Police, who fought street battles with the unemployed, feared revolution was imminent and the volatile Irish immigrant population, with their inborn hatred of the English, added to the tensions.

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