Young Bradman

81 Australia thought that it might be a fraction easier to open an innings than go in first wicket down,’ Bradman told the ABC in 1988. As he added, the man first wicket down may have to go out in the first over or two, whereas the opening bat faces the opening bowler ‘before he has found his feet’. Even if Bradman were wrong, he plainly was seeking responsibility. Another asset of Bradman’s, that may crucially have placed him ahead of Jackson, is easily forgotten: his fielding. In that same match, the tourists thanks to Hendren and Hammond passed 550 for three, and still Bradman ran 100 yards to stop a glance from Hammond making four. In England’s 521 in the First Test, ‘D Bradman must have saved fully 50 runs’, thanks to his running in the field and accurate throwing, unlike some (unnamed) others. Bradman’s fielding was how the Englishmen first noticed him. In his end of career memoir Cricket My Destiny , Hammond recalled how against New South Wales he took 24 off an over of Bradman’s, whose five overs went for 55. Maurice Leyland drove a ball from Kelleway to Bradman at mid-off and called a run. Hammond went, Bradman threw straight to Oldfield, and Hammond carried on to the pavilion, run out. There he asked who the young man was, ‘because I could see there was no doubt about him as a fieldsman and I wanted to mark him down for next time’. Significantly Hobbs, who was not playing that match, learned like Hammond the hard way. In the first innings of the First Test, Mead drove past Bradman in the covers. Bradman chased, picked up one-handed, turned quickly and threw to the correct, far end. Both batsmen had hesitated before setting off for a third; Bradman’s low throw bounced into Oldfield’s hands when Hobbs was two yards short. By the Second Test, Hobbs ‘was careful not to risk a second run’. Australia began the seventh day of the Fourth Test, Friday 8 February 1929, on 260 for six, needing 89 more. Bradman was 16 not out. Australia was going well at 320 for seven, and Bradman had made 42 of the day’s 60, when Oldfield played the ball to Hobbs, ‘who was fairly close, and just in front of point’. ‘It was his call, because he was the striker,’ Bradman said in old age: and he was entitled to call, but as I was the recognised batsman and I was getting the runs, the thing to do was to let me have the strike. By calling me on a single for the last ball of the over he was depriving me of the strike, so really he shouldn’t have called. He should have let it go. But he did, and he took off straight away and I could see instantly that I had to go because if I didn’t, he would have been run out. Hobbs threw to Duckworth, who fell over the wicket as he broke it; Bradman was a yard out. The critics called it foolish, impossible; suicidal, Captain Ballantine said. According to him, Bradman ran at once, ‘which was tantamount to a call’. Macartney called it ‘gallant but tragic’, and said both men went together. As always, it did not matter who (if anyone) was to blame; Australia lost by 12 runs. ‘There was no luck in it,’ Arthur Mailey wisely wrote. ‘That comes under the heading of good or bad cricket.’ Tellingly, at the time and since, everyone saw Bradman as the man who could, and should, have stayed in; not Bert Oldfield, who was as