Young Bradman

17 Chapter two: Beginnings To the man who had made good – in the battle of life or in the less important realm of sport – not the least interesting period of his career is that of his early struggles. Gilbert Jessop, in the first edition of The Cricketer , April 1921 Bradman dedicated his 1930 book to ‘my dearest mother and father’. In the introduction, Pelham Warner – former England captain, founder of The Cricketer, a significantly conservative choice compared with professionals such as Hobbs or Woolley – praised Bradman’s pride in family: ‘He evidently possesses that filial piety which the Romans used to commend so highly.’ In January 1930, a journalist called on George Bradman’s ‘pretty little brick bungalow’ at 20 Glebe Street, Bowral, a ‘home which faces the cricket ground on which Don gained much of his early experience’. Perhaps taken for granted is how people who go on to play cricket well (or other games, or music) have the basic objects around them at an early age; or as the reporter put it more vaguely, the house had a ‘cricket atmosphere’. ‘Even when Don had to use both his hands to hold a cricket ball, he used one in his childish games,’ his father said. ‘At the age of eight or nine he was a very fair bat.’ The reporter called Mr Bradman an ‘enthusiastic’ cricketer, presumably as a kind way of saying unsuccessful. For as Mr Bradman said: You might just add that Don made his own way in the cricket world without any effort on my part. His enthusiasm, grit, and determination, coupled with the right temperament, have carried him through. And now he is sure of a trip to England [perhaps hinting at Bradman’s world-record 452 not out a few days before], where I hope he will be as successful as he has been in Australia . Mr Bradman could have sounded more caring. If he did not make an ‘effort’ for his son, it was not because he did not want to; more likely, he did not know how to. A clue came in another, strangely defensive, remark by Mr Bradman – ‘Are we proud of him? Well, don’t you think we ought to be?’ That suggested a man, then in his mid-fifties, who naturally meant well, but who was confused, by how well his son had done; by something beyond his understanding. A G Bradman was batting last for his local team, Jindalee, seven miles north of Cootamundra, in February 1892. If George Bradman, he was then 16. By the mid-1900s he was playing for nearby Stockinbingal and Wallendbeen. His son was as kind as that visiting reporter of 1930. In My Cricketing Life Bradman wrote that his father never made a century: ‘His highest score was 70-something and that time he got out through trying to hit a six with a bat that broke over the hit.’ In that little story we see the son showing more interest in the need for good equipment than number of runs (for cannot every cricketer tell you his highest score?!). Looking back further, in his 1950 book, Bradman summed up his father as ‘always a great cricket enthusiast’. In March 1907, when George Bradman and family were