Young Bradman

131 knowledge of both I suggest that the tension in the players’ dressing room before a Test, especially the first, and in particular the feelings of the captains, must be experienced before they can be appreciated.’ Bradman did have feelings like anyone else, then; and before the last day of the last Test, Wednesday 19 August, he had a sleepless night: not, he wrote later, worrying that Australia would lose (‘for that seemed obvious enough’); nor because he had predicted Australia would win: ‘I just felt as though I was living over again the anxious happenings of the previous day and sheer nervous tension asserted itself more than I ever experienced as a player. It sounds stupid but it is there.’ More narrow than ‘temperament’ was the ‘right’, or ‘big match’, temperament. As it was intangible, some scoffed at it; ‘the fact remains that some players are better fitted for a big occasion than others’, said Hammond in a May 1930 article. In his early memoir, Bradman put it in a more practical way: ‘The better the bowling, the more interesting the fight.’ Even aged 17, making 234 against Bill O’Reilly, a bowler with a (local) reputation, Bradman told himself that one or the other must win: ‘I am a firm believer in this attitude of mind,’ he said in his early memoir. ‘It does not always come off of course, but I am sure it is the right way to go about your batting.’ He claimed he might not concentrate enough on lesser occasions, and did less well, he said in the December 1930 serial: I would rather play in an important cricket match than any other, and would rather play in a big Test game than any other. The keen atmosphere of a thrilling Test seems to bring my powers of concentration up to their very highest pitch, and in these games I feel an incentive that no ordinary game can give me. Other gifted batsmen felt the same, even to a fault. HS Altham in his History of Cricket in 1926 gave the example of George Gunn’s ‘almost insolent ease’; however, some ‘curious kink of temperament’ kept him from doing all he could have; sometimes he liked to irritate a bowler more than make runs. Patsy Hendren, in a 1921 newspaper article, reminded readers to have a goal, in all things: ‘What should be every batsman’s one prominent aim? To make runs!’ Does that difference in purpose alone explain why Hendren made 170 first-class centuries and Gunn 52? Hendren said more; ‘a batsman ought not to potter or block, but to seek 40 runs an hour’, which in his day meant about two runs each six-ball over. Bradman’s 236 at Worcester in 1930 came at roughly 50 an hour; his 452 not out at a rate of about 65. Asked about scoring so quickly – which meant he could make his famous 309 in a day in the Leeds Test of 1930 – in 1988 Bradman said: I think the reason for that was that my basic attitude towards batting was to be aggressive; I believed that when the fellow was bowling the ball to me, that I would try and score if I could. Now if he bowled a good ball, I couldn’t score from, I naturally played defensively, at it; but my object was to score if I could; I fell back on defence if I had to. I think too many players are defensive in their mental attitude; they think, I will defend, and I will score if I get a bad ball; now that’s the opposite philosophy. How did he do it?