Young Bradman

89 England The two places were only five miles apart; indeed, the hospital was only a mile and a half from where they would bury Jackson, four years later. It is as well that men do not know such things. The distances were small, but the difference it showed in character was clear: that Bradman kept his promises, and preferred to play in front of lunatics rather than do politicians a favour. Over lunch at the hospital, the hosts urged Bradman into standing up. ‘I don’t like making a speech,’ he began, ‘I would sooner play cricket …’ Bradman had a bowl as the Herald made 314 for five and opened the hospital’s batting with another man, who retired, as did the next batsman, which brought in an uncle of Bradman’s, JE Cupitt. Bradman kept going; for the sake of the schoolboys who had cheered him as he walked out to bat. Towards the end around 5.00 pm he ‘gave a great exhibition of hitting’, the Herald reported. The ball knocked pieces off trees, landed on roofs, cleared roofs and landed in streets. ‘To the last ball of the day Bradman ran half-way down the pitch and got the ball with the full face of the bat. When last seen it was travelling due north.’ Bradman came in 228 not out of 354 for one (‘apparently due to kindly forethought, no analysis was kept by the scorers for the Herald bowlers’). ‘Here, indeed, was young Australia in excelsis,’ Fletcher told readers three days later: … and when Bradman sat down beside me with a cup of tea ready to his hand, it was not the plate of cakes in front of him that caught his eye, but the half of a glorious water-melon all ready to be eaten. It had been grown on the spot. It was a credit to Gladesville, and I suggested that he take a cut from the red heart of it without circumlocation or delay. Then to see him, with flushed face and bright eyes after his hour’s batting get outside that wedge of pure fruit was a sight for sore eyes. He was as young as he looked, and he was as intense about putting away water-melon at the moment as he had been to get the ball for the twentieth time to the boundary. We can enjoy the picture of the 70-year-old editor – with ‘charming old world courtesy’, an obituarist wrote later – inviting the 21-year-old to tuck in. Was it by chance that the seat beside Fletcher was free, for the day’s main attraction? Had someone suggested that Bradman sit there, in the name of pleasing Fletcher and giving the asylum a good press? It allowed Fletcher to give a rare description of Bradman at close range. Rather than ‘the magician all round the wicket’, seen from 100 or more yards away, Bradman was someone with an appetite the same as anyone else (besides an appetite for runs; did he have to make as many as 228 in a social match?!). Fletcher was comparing harbour bridge and Bradman; each happened to be coming together at the same time, as an advertisement to the world for Sydney and Australia. Fletcher’s symbolism was clever; his article, and his day, did not end there. As the hospital manager showed Fletcher around, past locked doors and cells (‘it made one shudder!’), Fletcher saw a ‘paradox’. Bradman was ‘young Australia’, ‘keen and mentally efficient ready for anything’: ‘The war had shown him to be a magnificent fighter and an incomparable team worker when the necessity arose; and now we have the rising generation in 1930