Young Bradman

38 School and district years While Dipper was too modest to say if he was born a cricketer, it sounded like it; while still at Tewkesbury Grammar School, he carried his village club’s bag four or five miles to away matches, and was allowed to bat last. On leaving school, the village eleven elected him captain, and secretary. As Bradman put in a lifelong service to cricket, as player, writer and administrator, that gap of a year or more looks even more of a mystery. Did something, or someone, about tennis, appeal more than cricket for a while, and then stop? Had Bradman done all the learning of cricket he felt he could, by looking on, and was waiting to begin as a player, among men; and had Bradman simply been too small? When Don Bradman and Roy Whatman opened for Bowral in October 1925, the Southern Mail described them as ‘midgets’. Is it a coincidence that his six-footer brother Victor that month was ‘one of the newcomers … and may develop into a good medium bowler with practice’? Did Don need, at least at first, his older brother by his side? At Berrima for the first match of the season, Don opened the batting and retired, for 53 (out of 98). Bowral lost, as Berrima made 159; Don took one caught and bowled. It would only take one summer for Don to show he was too big for his roots. In the Sydney Morning Herald serial in December 1930, Bradman wrote of ‘a rather remarkable feature in my cricketing career’. It stayed true until he retired: ‘The weaker the opposition and the more unimportant the match the more likely I was to fail.’ That was a more modest way of saying that he did best against the best – in the later 1920s, for New South Wales; and then in Test matches. In January 1926, the best meant Wingello A. At Bowral, the visitors won the toss and asked Bowral to bat. Stumps were drawn early at 5.15 pm so that Wingello could catch the train for the two dozen miles home. After about three hours, Bowral were 335 for two. Bill Bill O’Reilly, of Wingello, New South Wales and Australia.