Young Bradman

111 that he was human, but what he did, his output, looked like what a machine would do. A man’s work became ‘mechanical’, or ‘listless’, as the cricket writer GD Martineau put it in 1927, through over-work. Martineau was writing about coaching youths, and suggested that the ‘pro’ paid to coach at a fee-paying school bowled for so long that he let faults in his batting pupils go unchecked. The Sussex veteran Albert Relf in 1921, writing about why players had off-days, gave many reasons, including the weather; and ‘ill-luck’, a player knowing he had always done badly at a ground, which sounded more like superstition. A common reason, he said, was ‘a dull feeling’, that you did not feel like the bat or ball that day, just as someone might not feel like working with a pen, typewriter, or spade. ‘After all, cricketers are but human, and the human can never go on always like a machine. The brain, the limb, the eye, the body, are too liable to be affected by the merest item.’ Relf, who killed himself, was implying that the consistently successful player was less human because he suffered less from ‘nerves’. It was an age of ‘mechanical, spiritless’ cricket, Cardus wrote in February 1927. He was commenting on the timeless Sheffield Shield match at Brisbane, where Victoria, set 753 to win by Queensland, made 518. It became Cardus’ habit to contrast, as he did in March 1929, the ‘so many grinding mechanical men’ in the final, timeless England-Australia match, with his heroes from before the 1914-18 war, ‘when Victor Trumper turned every field into a cloth of gold by his brilliance’. Note that Cardus was implying that someone brilliant was not ‘mechanical’. Another reason for the large scores, which made bowlers and batsmen alike conserve their strength and avoid risks, was what Edward Lyttleton in his 1925 memoir termed ‘the billiard table wicket’. Batting became easier, or too easy, thanks to the predictable bounce, which mimicked the regular action of a piece of machinery. Hence in May 1927 when Surrey made 557 on the first day on a ‘perfect wicket’ at The Oval, the Times could claim that Sandham and Hobbs, two of the most expert batsmen of all time, started ‘in their own mechanical way, loose balls being put away for four and others being struck in the orthodox manner to the fieldsmen’. A pitch with ‘life’ – an interesting choice of word – had more bounce, or helped the ball to seam or spin off the straight; which demanded human attention from the batsman. The same assumptions of mixed human and mechanical qualities applied to bowling. As early as 1895, CB Fry was writing of bowlers needing ‘more than mere mechanical accuracy’ to dismiss batsmen on good wickets. Just as a machine tool made other objects, so Fry was assuming that bowling the same, ball after ball, required the same input and output. Control over the ball was a good skill to have – length was the first thing to acquire, CTB Turner told the bowlers at the SCG practice pitches in October 1926, during Bradman’s trial. However he found several of the bowlers ‘too mechanical’: ‘Every ball delivered should be slightly different to the one that preceded it. Surprise was the greatest asset any bowler could possess.’ A batsman’s task was different. It did not matter whether he surprised the bowler, fielder, or anyone; he had to do something with the Bradman or machine?