Young Bradman

75 Australia by a yard. The crowd had been cheering as soon as Bradman made the pull, and section after section of the MCG took up the ovation and died down; louder, the newspapers noted, than for Alan Kippax’s debut Test century three days before. Five hundred miles away, ‘a roar of cheers’ from thousands swept Hyde Park, so the News told readers next day. Men tossed their hats in the air, women their handkerchiefs and umbrellas; car drivers honked; tram drivers clanged bells, the passengers clapped and cheered too. In downtown Wagga, outside Gissing’s there was hardly enough room on the pavement. What would dog Bradman for the rest of his life – that everyone could have an opinion about him – began. After the match, ‘Stork’ Hendry, yet another teammate who mixed playing for his country with giving words to the ‘papers, said that there was no need to say more about Bradman, ‘for I am sure all that can be said about him has been said’. He may have meant that so much was forever said because the public followed cricket so closely; or, that the critics saw the same things in Bradman as they did when he began for New South Wales, 12 months before: his ‘great batting ability’, ‘right temperament’, and ‘the ways of a veteran’, to take Clem Hill as an example. Compared with all the interest in what Bradman did, few then knew what Bradman looked like, as even the best camera, pointed like a Gatling gun at the middle of the field, only took photographs that made the players look matchstick-tall on the rough newsprint. Enough pictures of young Bradman have survived, as collected in The Bradman Albums published with his blessing in old age. The setting however was usually artificial, either as one of a team, or with bat in a characteristic pose, as if awaiting the ball. Bradman looked stiff; like anyone, he wanted to show his best face. A more insightful image was one in newspapers of Bradman and Jackson walking beyond the gate at Adelaide Oval to open the batting for New South Wales against South Australia, the week after the Third Test. A December 1928 cartoon in the Sydney Sun newspaper has an ‘Enthusiastic Hillite’ calling his newborn ‘John Ryder Alan Kippax Donald Bradman Melbourne Snooks’ .