Young Bradman

149 Bradman’s time, cricket lacked enough good pitches and even enough elite matches for a Bradman to happen. After him, the audience, if it took time to examine itself (which it does not) did not want another 99.94. It wanted and cheered what it got; men with thick tattooed forearms, who can biff 40 in 20 balls then miss a straight one or give a catch in the outfield. Just as society only uses money to value whatever it does – and if what you do has no value, you have no money – so does cricket. In the name of chasing that money, to win, batsmen have to biff; there is no point in defending for a draw; because there is no draw in a limited-overs format. This chosen extreme of competition where only winning has value, which requires that half the teams lose, has taken cricket down a path where another Bradman is practically impossible. Not philosophically impossible, as it is wrong to assume anything; but as good as. If we wanted a Bradman we would find one, or at least try harder to find one; or we would bend the rules until we invented one. Old history books age as exquisitely as old sportsmen. The Triumph of the West by John Roberts, a 1985 book of a BBC television series, set out how ‘western civilisation’, from the ancient Greeks onwards, came to dominate the globe. Such a sweep of history had no place for Bradman, or any Australian; in fact there were only three mentions of Australia: its discovery, its railways and its sheep-farming. This was story-telling with a European point of view; quaintly the professor never asked himself if the people already in Australia or the Americas felt undiscovered. Ironically, that very quality – was it nonchalant, or callous? – had been a necessary ingredient of the English, and other Europeans, as they spread, physically, economically and culturally, across the world. By Roberts’ time, more than the physical empires had gone; so had the self-confidence. It made an odd note for his work to start, and end, on: ‘Since 1900, a great dream has faded. To many in the West, their civilisation appears to have gone wrong.’ This was merely more Europe-centred stuff, and of its time. A few years later, as Communist Russia fell, western people could feel optimistic; only for that to fade again. Too many people had lost, or never had, belief in the ‘power of reason and traditional western values’, whether Christianity or Marxism: ‘There seems to be little left for the educated to believe in.’ Some have clung to religion, or some sort of politics. Others clutch at worldly things: their house and garden, good food, music, or indeed sport or the study of the past. Any of the several sports that the world’s embraced won’t let you down, even if your favourite team or player has to, sometimes, for someone else’s to win. Playing cricket, and tennis and golf, satisfied Bradman – the pleasure anticipated beforehand, the give and take of mock-battle in the field (‘one of us must win’, as Bradman said of his 234 against O’Reilly and Wingello) that lets the successful man lord it over others, while keeping to civilised rules; and the catharsis of the winning run. It pleases others to watch, even if they could never do it themselves. More practically, people in so many parts of the world have embraced sport, or music, or a handful of heroes on film, because they can; because anything more political is too dangerous, too expensive, or more subtly sewn up by a few. Likewise a The Himalayan Men