Young Bradman

120 Chapter nine: How did he do it? One-third of the art of soldiering is, simply, knowing one’s job. Another third is the possession of good sound common sense. The final third is luck. Peter Bamm, The Invisible Flag (1956) Another man on that 1965/66 tour was Geoffrey Boycott, not one (with reason) to doubt his worth. Even he, in his 1991 book Boycott on Cricket , called Bradman ‘a genius and twice as good as any other batsman’. Many who saw Bradman came up with reasons why. Trevor Bailey’s five in his book The Greatest of my Time are as good as any: ‘the inevitability in the way he dealt with the bad ball’; Bradman ‘saw the ball earlier than most people’; he had exceptional reflexes and fast footwork (applying what he gained in the previous reason); he had concentration, ‘and regarded a century as a springboard for bigger things’; and had a fine defence – he was basically sound. The English bowlers, Bill Bowes and Fred Root, each pointed to how Bradman reduced the chances of losing his wicket by generally keeping the ball on what Root called the ‘carpet’. Many others said the same things, in other ways. Dr Eric Barbour in his 1932 essay wrote of Bradman as ‘unerring in choosing the right shot for each ball’. Most important of all, he did not play risky strokes; ‘he does not permit himself the perfectly timed and full-bloodied drive at the pitch of the ball which is so beautiful when it comes off’, Barbour wrote. Alfred Dipper agreed. ‘Many is the time,’ he wrote, ‘I have regrettably left the wicket for the pavilion wondering whatever had prompted me to lift that perfect drive so high and into the hands of a nimble and watchful fieldsman!’ Knowing is one thing – Mark Taylor learned to keep the ball down in his childhood car port; managing it always, another. Bradman in old age claimed he never hit the ball deliberately in the air, ‘unless I felt it was quite safe to clear the fieldsman, or it was a very bad ball’. He recalled his 254 in the Second Test of 1930 as his best, technically; even the catch by Chapman was the best Bradman saw (‘you could hear the ball crack the palm of his hand’). This was something else that adults not only had to learn, and then keep out of bad habits; they might have to unlearn what they did as boys. The young Arthur Gilligan, for example, batted on the ‘sporting’ pitches of Edwardian Sussex villages; ‘the square was mown but the remainder of the ground was composed of long grass and it was necessary to lift the ball’, to score runs. The same was true even later and in towns. In 1921 Tamworth cricket club in Staffordshire played the local golf club, on the castle grounds, and the ‘long fields’ – that is, the fielders in the deep - had a ‘searching time’ in the ‘rough’. The editorial writer of The Cricketer , driving through Cambridgeshire in 1930, saw ‘the same frantic dives’, before fielders lost the ball in the pasture. Bradman came across long grass, for example at Cootamundra on the Bohemians’ tour of Easter 1928. Jack Fingleton made another worthwhile point; besides whatever Bradman