Young Bradman

93 England try on a camel at Cairo), he still had energy for more travelling. Bradman did not include that visit to Sykes, the maker of his bats, in his memoirs which jumped from the Cup final to batting at Worcester and Leicester; once again, his dash to Sykes and back in time for practice on the Monday morning did not fit the story Bradman wanted to present to the world. What, then, was Bradman keeping to himself? Business; a brief rest from the formal round, wearing a public face, and seeing the same faces; or both? Was Bradman assertive off the field because of the confidence that came from success on the field, or could he only be successful as a batsman, staying in for hours, because he had an assertive character? More useful is the view of Learie Constantine, one of the most revealing cricketer-writers of Bradman’s time, who in his 1949 book Cricketers’ Cricket listed Bradman as one of seven ‘most outstanding captains’. All were autocrats, like most great men, Constantine believed, ‘probably because they are so certain of their own judgement that they become impatient with less decisive people’. Where Bradman went on his free Sunday, the other tourists might not mind, or even notice. By leaving his seat empty during the Cup final, and during the civic dinner at Worcester Guildhall after the first day of their match, everyone noticed. Fred Root did; in his 1937 memoir he told of how Bradman left the reception at 9.00 pm, and went straight to bed. Presumably Root was not a witness as far as Bradman’s bedroom. Root however did have a conversation with Bradman, after bowling to him all the next day: ‘… before setting off from Australia he had made up his mind that cricket was the only object of the tour so far as he was concerned and that he intended to cut social functions as far as was consistent with decency.’ Like Fletcher at Gladesville, Root is important for bringing us close to Bradman, literally and metaphorically. Bradman was applying the same methods to touring that he had done to batting in ‘big cricket’ in his last Australia House at Aldwych in central London.