Young Bradman

127 Like many important books, Shillinglaw’s came out of his life story, as he admitted at the very end. He had instinctively taken to Bradman’s ‘rotary’ method of raising and lowering the bat, without knowing it was Bradman’s, until aged 15 his first coach (because he had risen to open for the North of England against the South) changed him into ‘a ‘mass produced’ orthodox batsman’. After his time, Shillinglaw understood that with the unwelcome physical change to his style came a mental loss of confidence; and a regret, that he had not been ‘strong enough to resist’. While we can feel compassion for Shillinglaw, and learn from his honesty – although can we ever be sure about someone’s equation about themselves, that x led to y, for good or bad – we can discount what’s unspoken by Shillinglaw; that if only he had stuck by Bradman’s method, he could have been a contender (and even another Bradman?!). For there are other ways than the orthodox, and Bradman’s. In August 1930 the Times’ cricket correspondent Arthur Croome recalled Ranji as ‘the man mainly responsible for the difference between ancient and modern cricket’. Ranji taught, ‘Crumbo’ wrote, by ‘example and precept’; that is, by others seeing what he did, and taking a moral from it. As Croome laid out in this important article – he was How did he do it? A 1927 Punch cartoon neatly satirised various sorts of men by their batting stances: only the first, the squire’s son, stood ‘in the orthodox way’ .