Word: bradman
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When Australian cricket legend Donald Bradman fell ill with peritonitis in London in September 1934, King George V was not amused. "I want to know everything," he reportedly said upon hearing the news. It was a measure of the esteem in which Bradman was held, even by his nemeses the English...
...This revealing anecdote - and much more - is chronicled in Alan Eason's book, The A-Z of Bradman, an alphabetical compendium of useful and useless information on the venerated cricketer, who died...
...sideways at your fellow citizens, wasn't much aired in monarchist circles. And Australia has always been short not only of convincing shared ceremonies of national identity but also of shared folk heroes. You can count them on less than two hands. Two are alive--the great cricketer Donald Bradman, now 91, and the swimming champion Dawn Fraser. The veterans of Gallipoli, a few of whom still live, are invested with a collective heroism. The other heroes are dead. They include a racehorse, Phar Lap; and a criminal, the bushranger, Irish nationalist and protorepublican Ned Kelly, hanged for theft...
...Bradman, the Chappells and other past players, reaching the ton was surely no less satisfying. Yet they managed to confine their celebrations to removing their cap and acknowledging, with a raising of their bat, the applause of the crowd. Today's leaping, fist-pumping performances - unleashed no matter what the state of play - are merely self-indulgent. When they follow upon the defeat of an opponent, they smack of triumphalism. The century-maker directs his attention first and foremost at his teammates. During this exchange of joy and gratitude, there might as well be no one else at the ground...
...Before the mass signings, there were the momentous innings. In his colossal autobiography, Out of My Comfort Zone (Viking; 801 pages), Waugh takes us back to the boyhood play that made them possible. Like the young Bradman, he devised a simple solo game that soldered into his technique the basics of watching the ball and a straight bat. Like Ian and Greg Chappell, he had a brother who loved cricket as much as he did, and together they played till dark on all manner of surfaces, ever desperate to outdo each other. Both Steve and Mark Waugh became players...