Young Bradman

59 New South Wales cricketer, on and off the field – spared Bradman worry about whether he would do well enough to stay in the team. That sensible attitude may have come naturally, because in other ways he was learning by his mistakes. He recalled the Monday night journey to Broken Hill as ‘a tremendous adventure’, and admitted that on the train he let an electric fan play full on him, as he tried to stay cool and could not fall asleep, ‘and got a cold in my eye’. Bradman needed one more piece of luck; Jackson got a boil on his knee from the same journey. While the rest of the team went down a silver mine on the Tuesday, Jackson and Bradman had to stay in bed. Jackson did not play at Broken Hill or Adelaide; that let in Bradman for his first-class debut. This matters not only because it shows Bradman’s rise was not inevitable – ‘originally the selectors’ idea was that I should be 12 th man’, Bradman recalled in old age. Any delay of even a few months could have made a career-changing difference. Within 12 months, Bradman was making his debut for Australia, ahead of Jackson, having reversed Jackson’s one-year’s start over him. If Bradman had kept developing one year behind Jackson, Bradman might easily have found himself only making his Test debut as Jackson did in the Fourth Test of the 1928/29 series; or not at all. We know that Bradman made so many runs, and Jackson impressed so much too, that they were as sure as any to go to England in 1930. Yet they would have known that their state captain Alan Kippax and the South Australian spinner Clarrie Grimmett made their debuts for Australia in the last Test New South Wales on their southern tour, December 1927. Left to right, back: Norbert Phillips, Frank Jordan, Albert Scanes, Sam Everitt, Tommy Andrews, Don Bradman, Archie Jackson, Bert Oldfield. Sitting: Gordon Morgan, Alan Kippax (captain), Dr FV McAdam (manager), Ray McNamee, Arthur Mailey.