Young Bradman

31 Chapter three: School and district years His career was yet another example of the truth that self-education is the only form of education. Basil Liddell Hart, TE Lawrence (1934) One of the strangest but truest books by a man of Bradman’s time was FSP by Arthur Gwynne-Browne, a hotel manager who served in the British Army’s Field Security Personnel in France in 1940. When interviewed to be an officer, the interviewers asked him what games he played. He understood why his answer of tennis disappointed them. They wanted to hear cricket and football, that marked men as fit to be an officer. At his fee-paying school, when he had wanted to play tennis, the teachers called it a game for girls, ‘and don’t you let us catch you doing it’: So each summer term we stood in some long grass for three hours four times each week and that was cricket and like Guinness it is good for you. Gwynne-Browne, despite his Shavian, idiosyncratic punctuation, went to the heart of sports, schooling, and the tension between doing what seemed right to you, and what society said was right for you. Many people do normal things and will not mind that, or even notice. Bradman, at the other extreme, was thwarted as much as Gwynne-Browne. In the return match after his 115, Bradman’s captain asked him to retire at 72; and Mittagong then asked Bowral to leave Bradman out. If having to retire were a problem, many cricketers would like to make enough runs to have that problem. No-one expects a batsman to retire in an important match. Bradman had a problem as he was growing up because retiring – or not being allowed to play at all – would hold him back. But if he showed himself so much better than everyone else, and was never out, he would unbalance the game for the rest. The Southern Highlands had a tradition of batsmen retiring. For Wingello, Bob and George Jeffreys, from a leading cricketing family in the district, each retired on reaching their century in November 1911. So did Kangaloon’s opening batsman, when Bowral visited in January 1913. Men that Bradman played alongside as a lad did so too. In any local cricket, a few good batsmen can flourish while the rest fail. In January 1918, ‘on the Glebe wicket’ at Bowral, George Whatman for Roberton Park retired with 104 out of 268, while Sid Cupitt made 127 not out of 175. In Bradman’s first match with adults, when he made 37 not out, in a friendly at Moss Vale at the start of the season in October 1920, O Prior retired for 113. The next Saturday at Moss Vale, ‘Bowral gave some of its tail end a strike’, and Bradman batted again, for 29 not out. For a 12-year-old to make 66 runs not out among any adults was outstanding – ‘a promising colt was found in Don Bradman’, the Southern Mail reported. But for unselfish teammates, Bradman might not have batted. In January 1922, the visitors Colo Vale were plainly not equal to Bowral, making 69 all out before Bowral made 148. Bradman, O Prior and Sid Cupitt, the sixth to eighth batsmen, all retired, for 16, 20