Young Bradman

154 attention. You can grow up in a family materially rich; emotionally poor. One is quantitative, easy to see; the other qualitative, easily hidden. In his definition of batting greatness, in 1932 articles on Bradman, WG Grace and Trumper, only one of Dr Eric Barbour’s four ‘aspects’ was about quantity – performance (that is, scores). The others were style (‘or artistry in stroke production’), personality, or his standing among his fellows (which the spectator might never see or read, or care about) and ‘relative merit’ (40 out of 60 may be an innings of more merit than 200 out of 600). Barbour hailed the ‘sheer effrontery’ of Trumper’s batting. If Trumper had cared, he could have set records, ‘but had he been able to play for records he could not have been just who he was’. Arthur Mailey in an October 1930 article more explicitly took up the question whether Bradman or Trumper was the greater. Mailey fastened on satisfaction, the feeling that crops up again and again in Bradman’s story: ‘Trumper was satisfied with a century. Bradman is not. That makes Bradman a more valuable batsman, but not greater, than Trumper.’ Barbour noted correctly that when the generation that watched Trumper died, later men would judge on results alone. Bradman agreed. When Ray Martin put it to Bradman that he was not as ‘classical’ as Trumper, or Stan McCabe, Bradman thought aloud that ‘cricket is the only game in the world where you get marks for your style’: When you’re playing golf, the lowest score wins. When you’re playing tennis it’s the man who wins the match, they don’t worry about his style. There were lots of players who were more attractive to watch than I was, but in the end it’s the fellow who makes the most runs and wins the game. Followers of the game were fretting over that attitude before they had These Our Actors Don Bradman with his mother Emily.