Young Bradman

48 First grade or human group, success bred its own failure; success kept an ageing team together, without the necessary refreshing of younger men. Reflecting on the failed tourists of 1926, Monty Noble – former Test captain, arguably Sydney’s premier living cricketer - summed up: Australia’s grand old men must give way to younger players. The selectors and those in authority must adopt a bold policy of encouragement, and find promising young bowlers. The old brigade have carried Australia long enough. Noble, too, was assuming that the batting would look after itself, as historically it usually has; all the successful Australian teams, of 1921, 1948, the mid-1970s and around 2000, had two or more wicket-taking bowlers, usually fast; the failing teams did not. One of the ‘old brigade’ that stood to lose, 40-year-old Charles Kelleway, put it diplomatically in the Sydney weekend newspaper Truth in November 1926: Moyes, Jones and Cranney had ‘a difficult task to perform’. That made the rise of Bradman, and Jackson, easier. ‘He always had ambitions,’ wrote Jim Mathers of Bradman in January 1949, when he became Sir Donald. In telling the stories of great men, it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that behind their deeds was more mastery; a plan, towards a known goal. Because we know what happened, it’s also tempting to assume that what happened was sure to happen. In fact, as Bradman recalled in old age, ‘there were three or four clubs that sought my services. Mudgee Cranney tried hard to persuade me to go to Cumberland, but in the end I threw in my lot with St George.’ As Bradman hinted, by giving the outcome he was leaving much of the story out. The week after the trial, newspapers reported Bradman had accepted Cumberland’s invitation to play first grade. Within two weeks the deal had fallen through, ‘as he [Bradman] is unable to afford the loss of time and expense of weekly visits to Sydney, and the Cumberland club has no fund from which to pay expenses’. In that January 1949 article, the Sydney journalist Jim Mathers reminisced about how he was standing beside Dick Jones at that Monday afternoon, 11 October 1926 trial, ‘when the selector told him [Bradman] he showed great promise and ought to play in Sydney club cricket’. Bradman replied: ‘But I cannot afford to come to Sydney. I’ll have to go back to Bowral and play tennis.’ Would Mathers really have remembered the exact words of a nobody? Even if he did, would the 18-year-old Bradman have spoken that familiarly to an important man he had just met? We can more readily believe Mathers when he added that Jones and another administrator, Frank Cush, ‘quietly and gracefully’ paid Bradman 30 shillings a week expenses, out of their own pockets, for him to play Saturdays in Sydney. Presumably Mathers would not have invented something that the men could deny. Bradman was still yet to play for a Sydney club on Wednesday 10 November 1926 when he played for the ‘Possibles’, against the ‘Probables’. The three state selectors, who were about to pick their first Sheffield Shield side,