Young Bradman

27 Beginnings all sorts of angles which was a great test of my reflexes and ability to catch. I would also throw the ball against the cylindrical upright of the clothes hoist on the back lawn and get excellent diving practice as the ball shot off at different angles. Being alone (which is not the same as being lonely) or with company did not seem to matter. Nor did any of them need adults, to encourage them, or even be there, although Rod Marsh did admit to being spoilt (‘mum and dad always made sure Graham and I had the equipment to develop our interest in cricket’). Besides the vague but natural grumble that life is not what it used to be, some people reckon that in ‘the good old days’ children were free to wander (as Bradman did) and play, not only staying out of trouble but having a happier time. In truth, youths improvised because they had nothing else to do. As Marsh recalled in his autobiography You’ll Keep , he and his brother played cricket in the back yard, because the school playing field around the corner was hard-baked and had rocks. Across generations, people have hailed Australia as a sunny land of opportunity, often in contrast to Britain, ‘the old country’. Again, the reality is not so plain. In Britain and Australia alike, officials persecuted young people wanting to play, especially in regulated city parks and beaches, and if balls broke windows; and if youths made a noise or ‘nuisance’, especially on a Sunday. In December 1918 a man wrote to Bowral council, complaining ‘that a large number of children were continually swimming and running about the banks of the creek near his property, and often committed indecent acts’. We have no way of knowing what he meant, or what if anything came of his complaint, passed to police; but he was talking about the creek behind Bradman’s home. Usually adults and children compromised and cases did not reach the public record. An exception was in Tamworth in Staffordshire in May 1925, when 14 boys were summonsed for playing football on gardens in the town. The cases may only have come to court because one of the gardens trespassed on was next to the office of the magistrates’ clerk. One land owner complained that his gardens were like a recreation ground – which was presumably what the boys lacked. In another, July 1925 court case at nearby Kingsbury, boys accused of obstructing the main road to Tamworth with pieces of slag (in a coal- mining district) said they had been playing cricket; the stones were their wickets. The court heard Kingsbury had a recreation ground, but ‘big boys’ played football on it and drove the smaller children off. Children, with the very least power in society, were least likely to have any physical space of their own. Adults seldom understood. ‘I always said,’ Bradman said in old age, ‘the two main ways to learn cricket are one, experience for yourself of actually playing; and two, watching somebody else.’ That left Bradman worse off than many lads of his time, let alone generations with television and the internet. Bradman’s father took him to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) for two days of the Fifth Test against England in February 1921: ‘That was the only first-class match I ever saw until I played in one.’ He remembered the 170 by Charlie Macartney most: