Young Bradman

144 The Himalayan Men much the same, whatever the continent, only made it feel more unnatural. To become sick of it was, ironically, the healthy reaction. Rod Marsh, who turned professional in 1977, was of the watershed generation of elite Australian cricketers that gave themselves over to the game full-time. In his 1984 book Gloves, Sweat and Tears he admitted to losing interest (or, to sound stronger, ‘the killer instinct’) towards the end of his career, ‘a legacy of an overdose of cricket … obviously the more cricket you play, the greater the likelihood of boredom setting in’. Again, to an outsider that made no sense, as the authorities marketed every match as exciting. Others agreed with Marsh, across generations. Hutton in 1949 was finding batting ‘arduous’, so arduous that he wished for ‘several months of complete rest each year’. He hardly ever got it. Bob Woolmer in his Art and Science of Cricket , published in 2008 after his death, likewise believed in a playing season of no more than seven months. In Bradman’s day, the slower pace of life gave time for rest; crossing to England took a month by sea, not 24 hours by air. As so often, however, the evidence does not allow for simple answers. The 1930 Australian tourists had a more intense playing itinerary than 21 st century counterparts. The day after winning the Fifth Test and the Ashes in London, they were playing Gloucestershire at Bristol (starting at noon, to give them time to rest!?). Likewise in July 1930 if the Australians had not won at Lord’s by 5.00 pm, they would have had to travel all night to Bradford, to begin playing Yorkshire the morning after. Not that The Cricketer showed any sympathy; it said the Australians could have caught a 9.50 pm train and arrived in Bradford at 2.20 am. ‘It would have taken them 20 minutes to get to bed in their hotel which adjoins the platform. They could easily have slept until 10.30am and been at Park Avenue in time for play.’ How would The Cricketer editor Pelham Warner have liked that?! In March 1929, after England’s tour of Australia, a diarist in the London Evening Standard fretted that some leading English players might become stale from too much touring: ‘Hammond, Sutcliffe, Freeman and Tyldesley have now been at it with no other interruption since the beginning of the season of 1927.’ The English summer would make it two and a half years unbroken. Bradman gave himself such rest, by only ever touring England for serious cricket in the Australian winter, for instance. Two generations on, by Marsh’s time, Bradman would have had to play more often, unless injured. Otherwise the press and public and other players could have complained he was selfish. His average may well have suffered. However, in an Australian summer, when playing in Adelaide he did two jobs in one day, so he told Ray Martin in 1996: … I’d go to work at seven o’clock in the morning and work there until it was time to go to the Adelaide Oval. Then I’d go back to work at the office after play and work until 10.30 or eleven o’clock at night … that was regular, I had to do that, in connection with my work. If Bradman’s equivalents in the 21 st century do other things too – make calls, pose for pictures – it’s hardly as demanding; nor do they have to do it, to make a good living. Since Bradman’s time the format of matches has become shorter and the