Young Bradman

54 First grade whizzing to every part of the field, and only those who attempted to stop them know how much ginger was behind them. His 320 not out of 480 for nine (one Bowral player did not turn up) beat his own record 300 of one year before. That local report confirmed what some in Sydney had said; less than one season in Sydney had polished this ‘find’. ‘He had a few lives, but then he was after runs off every ball,’ said The Scrutineer . Bradman wrote in his 1930 serial: Whether, as a result of my huge score, I do not know but a rule was passed that no first grade player, which by that time I had become, was free to play in such competitions; he was ever afterward barred. Bradman now had no option but to look to Sydney. That 320 went around the world, as news of freaks does; Bradman had his first mention in England, in The Cricketer . Someone else however, even younger than Bradman, was the talk of Sydney after the 1926/27 season: Archie Jackson. In November 1926 his Balmain teammate Arthur Mailey presented him with a bat from England. Mailey had only landed home from the tour of England the day before, after crossing the Pacific. Jackson then made 158 against Mosman in two and a half hours, his third century in five matches. In The Referee , ‘the Rambler’ hailed ‘the dainty Balmain colt, from whom much is expected’: His strokes seemed limitless, and they were made with a grace that very few boys at the age of 17 have revealed in Australian cricket … The boy has arrived all right ...’ Jackson had grown up with advantages over Bradman. He lived up the road from Birchgrove Oval, Balmain’s home ground; Arthur Mailey was a mentor. When in May 1930 at Leicester a ball from George Geary beat Jackson, and he walked off smiling, and Bradman went in to make 185 not out, Jackson sat next to Mailey. One of Jackson’s obituary writers in February 1933 recalled that ten years before a friend had asked him to see the schoolboy Jackson bat. ‘He looks to be Victor re-born,’ the friend said. Men compared Jackson with Trumper for more than the physical likeness – they were about the same height, and each light in build – and, as it turned out, his kind and modest nature. The story showed how Sydney cricket-lovers missed Trumper. Men welcomed the chance to project onto Jackson their almost religious love for the dead Trumper. Jackson played at the SCG in the 1923/24 season, aged 14, for a schools team; next season, he was playing second and first grade for Balmain. The next season, he was batting at three or opening for the firsts, and making centuries, and ended with 670 runs from 18 innings at 39. That placed him 35 th in the averages; only three men made more runs. Jackson did indeed arrive in that 1926/27 season, topping the averages with 870 runs at 87, well ahead of Alan Kippax with 619 runs at 69. Charles Kelleway, reviewing the summer in April 1927, described Jackson as ‘the find of the season’. After naming five other men, he listed Bradman as one of four more who ‘were tried out for their various abilities, and gained a fair measure of success’. Having died in Queensland, Jackson came to Sydney Central station in February 1933 in a coffin, on the same Brisbane express as Australia’s