Young Bradman

126 around ‘a little bit’, ‘but there was no problem with that, and in any event I used to change my grip periodically, even throughout an innings, I might change it, not very much, but just slightly’. He took mostly a middle and leg guard, as the best position to judge the ball (evidence of how bodyline undid Bradman’s method) and to avoid being leg before if he missed it. He kept his bat between his two feet (‘it was just simply my natural style; this is what I developed as a boy and never changed it, it suited me’): If you analyse my batting, you will find when I took the bat back, I tended to take it out towards slips, not dead straight; some players try to take the bat back very straight, a pendulum type of swing; I didn’t, I used to take the bat back towards the slips and then come around to get into position to play a ball straight and frankly I thought it gave me a little more flexibility in stroke-play than the perpendicular type of back-lift. In his television interview of 1996, Bradman demonstrated with a bat, and suggested that heavier bats than in his time made for perpendicular, not horizontal, shots by batsmen (‘they’re coached to keep the left wrist in front of the bat handle, and to keep the blade perpendicular’). In an MCC coaching book of 1994, Boycott singled out Bradman and his book The Art of Cricket , for picking up the bat in the direction of the slip fielders, then making a loop and bringing it down over the line of the stumps. The best players, Boycott claimed, never took the bat straight back, to come down like a pendulum: ‘It simply is not a natural movement and it will let you down under pressure.’ Even some accomplished cricketers did not appreciate this. Colin McCool, in a 1961 book The best way to play cricket , insisted on you bringing the bat down straight, to play defensively, and called Bradman’s back-lift ‘crooked’. How did he do it? A postcard from around 1900 of three Sussex amateurs: Charles Fry, Ranji, and George Brann. Note the different stances.