Young Bradman

108 so wrong, over-rating Jackson and under-rating Bradman? One of the few to admit his mistake was the English reporter SJ Southerton, who saw Bradman in Australia in 1928/29, ‘but little did we dream that his progress would be of such a triumphal nature’, he wrote in the 1931 Wisden . On his return to England in May 1929 Southerton had listed ‘Kippax, Jackson, Bradman and Fairfax as a group of very high class indeed’: ‘I consider Jackson as the finest youngster I have seen for many years. He possesses a really beautiful style and has almost every shot at his command.’ Jackson’s 164 on debut for Australia had impressed so many, including Bradman, who after all as a fellow batsman was closest to it. Clem Hill for example had described it as ‘one of the finest efforts in the history of Test cricket’. Whenever a critic compared Jackson and Bradman, Jackson came first, usually for his style. Dr Eric Barbour in a 1932 essay on Bradman claimed that Jackson’s style came from imitation: Jackson imitated Kippax, who had imitated Trumper. Instead, Bradman had made his own style, ‘formed by experience and tested by results’, and had become ‘the marvellously efficient scoring machine’, whose ‘cutting and glancing are both as graceful as could be desired’. Arthur Mailey, when asked to compare Bradman with Trumper in October 1930, made the point that Trumper (‘nearly six feet’) was some inches taller. The shorter Bradman had to play some shots with a less graceful cross bat. Jack Hobbs, comparing styles as the 1930 tour began, likewise harked back to the near past that readers would understand. Jackson was Trumper, Bradman Macartney; ‘Jackson the stylist and Bradman the scoring machine’. Tellingly, Hobbs covered Jackson first (‘with his fine defence and cool courage I do not see why he should not be outstanding’): Bradman or machine? On the Australian tour of England in 1902, Vic Trumper at the piano, with Clem Hill.