Young Bradman

51 First grade of course if that happens it doesn’t look too good. Batting on matting was a ‘decided bar to correct footwork’, said The Referee in April 1922 after seeing a country team led by Dr Leslie Podevin – former colleague of WG Grace at London County, cricket writer, captain and coach – for a week in Sydney. Most country batsmen ‘left their wicket quite open’, especially against slow bowlers, ‘with fatal results’: ‘The reason they gave for the lack of footwork necessary to enable them to get behind the ball in defence was the extremely lax interpretation of the lbw rule in the country. Whether the reasons for a country batsman’s habits were cultural (ignorant umpires) or material (the physics of matting), Bradman had to learn anew. In that ‘country week’ of five matches in Sydney, Bradman had scores of between 21 and 46; ‘not too good’, he reflected in 1930. ‘I had some difficulty in keeping the ball down on the ground,’ he recalled in old age. Bradman was watching other players – in his 1930s autobiography he singled out Kippax, Jackson and Kelleway – and experimenting with his grip, ‘and eventually decided not to change my natural grip’. The Saturday after his 110, Bradman took three wickets; he bowled enough for some to call him an all-rounder. In mid-January Bradman made 75 against Waverley at St George’s home ground in the southern suburb of Hurstville; on Australia Day, he hit 167 out of 291 for St George’s Colts against Waverley’s Colts, captained by Dr Poidevin; Sydney cricket was a small world. In March on a ‘rain-damaged wicket’ at the SCG, Bradman made second top score of 54 not out against Randwick. As Bradman ended the first grade season with 289 runs at an average of 48, sometimes he did little. In mid-February at Glebe’s home ground, Wentworth Park, he made a ‘patient’ 22, bowled by Dr JV Garner, who he was ‘never at home to’. A fortnight later at home to Gordon, Norval Campbell bowled him for 11. Bradman ended on 9 April with 16, caught and bowled, at Western Suburbs. Had he batted more to qualify for the batting averages, he would have come tenth in the league and second (after Scanes) for St George. Another sign that Bradman was in a hurry to get on was, ‘after much cogitation, and not a little trepidation’, his decision ‘that it would be in my best interests if I lived in Sydney’. From the order he told his story in the 1930 serial, he decided almost as soon as he began in first grade, and was having to get up at 5.00 am, roughly the Australian midsummer dawn, to catch the 6.00 am train from Bowral to Sydney, arriving before 9.00 am; ‘and after the match, I had to get myself an evening meal, and catch the train back to Bowral, and got home at midnight’, he recalled in old age. Those 30 shillings a week his well-wishers gave him left him in pocket – the train fare one way from Bowral to the city in the mid-1920s was five or six shillings, besides a smaller fare to Hurstville or an away match in the suburbs. Dinner somewhere might cost a shilling or more. More intangible but important were the competing tugs between his good life and the pull of a better, but unknown destiny. Hundreds of millions of men and women have wrestled inside as he did, as laid out in his 1930 serial: