Young Bradman

112 ball, to avoid getting out, and make runs. He could hit the ball (or try, and miss) in all directions and three dimensions. If he did the same to every ball, he probably would not last long. Hence variety, which implied human agency. Cardus admitted in his English Cricket that Bradman was ‘by no means a robot’. Why were middle-20 th century people quicker to liken people to machines than in the 21 st century, when far more machines are around? Partly, definitions changed. The first traffic lights on English roads in the 1920s were called ‘robots’. The very fact that machines were novel may have made people more alert to those they did see. Vic Bradman, like so many of his time, was the first in his family to own a method of transport with a motor; a cultural watershed easily overlooked; a century on, to not own such a thing might be odd. Racing motorcycles for sport tested machines, and the human qualities of the rider (‘courage, endurance, physical fitness, coolness, and superb judgement’ according to one list in 1926, besides ‘the technical knowledge that will enable him to extract that last ounce from his machine’). Races, such as the ‘Tourist Trophy’ on the Isle of Man, thrilled holiday-makers. English cricket, which swung between smugness and worry over its place in national life, faced competition for young men’s time, and spectators’ money. Machines, then, such as cars were becoming everyday sights in the 1920s. Newmachines affected language; it wasmodish to liken your body to a car. In 1925 the Nottinghamshire cricketer-footballer William Flint said he found playing both games over the year ‘to be just the very thing to keep one’s muscles and mind tuned up’. Machines, or what men of the day regarded Bradman or machine? Arthur Mailey in a January 1926 cartoon neatly linked cricket with politics when he imagined he and Grimmett going on strike in protest at having to bowl for so long on easy pitches.