Word: bradman
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...heroes go, Don Bradman has proved more durable than most. Playing before the television era helped, as did the quiet way he lived out his latter years. Nonetheless, cricket fans who've read widely are aware that Bradman had his flaws. He was aloof, a little selfish, perhaps, and parsimonious. Not for him drinks with the boys and colorful chat. Australia's greatest sportsman was an introvert who preferred reading and sipping tea to making friends...
...which you might say, so what? These are hardly grave faults. A new biography of a Bradman contemporary, however, takes the sideshow of trying to demythologize the batting maestro to a new level. The title, Jack Fingleton: The Man Who Stood Up to Bradman (Allen & Unwin; 302 pages) hints that the book is as much about Bradman as Fingleton, a gritty opening batsman who played 18 Tests for Australia in the 1930s and later penned several of cricket's most acclaimed books, including Brightly Fades The Don, a stylish account of Bradman's final appearances for Australia...
...Born a few months apart in 1908, Fingleton and Bradman were team-mates but never friends. On their first meeting, they had a Pride and Prejudice moment that set the tone of their relationship. Fingleton mispronounced the word tetanus, and Bradman corrected him with what Fingleton, a highly sensitive man except, it seems, where the feelings of others were concerned, perceived as scorn...
...comes under I for "I want to know" and not, say, K for King George) but it really doesn't matter where the book falls open - this is a work for dipping. Cricket lovers will be contentedly stroking chins over such arcana as the number of first-class appearances Bradman made before his first test (nine) or the highest number of consecutive test innings against England in which he did not score a century...
...couple of entries flick at Bradman's famously prickly character, but overall the tome - published to coincide with his centenary - is respectful. Such is Bradman's posthumous clout, and as cricket writer Gideon Haigh says in the foreword: "We are content for the deeds to stand...