Young Bradman

97 England day. Spectators there wore overcoats and sat under rugs, Bridges reported. After Leicestershire batted, Bradman went in late on the first day after the openers Jackson and Ponsford were out to Geary. ‘After the effusive references to Bradman’s big score at Worcester the spectators were prepared for some sparkling hitting,’ complained The Cardinal, the critic in the local Sports Mercury , after the Australians had gone, ‘but all they saw was a painstaking young man carefully digging himself in and not taking the slightest risk.’ Bradman indeed took more than two hours to hit his first four, off Ewart Astill. Geary was swinging the ball in the ‘dewy damp’ and once a ball from Geary beat Bradman with its away swing: ‘Bradman smiled.’ He ended the second day, the Monday, on 185 not out of 365 for five; and there the match ended, as more rain left the field so sodden on Tuesday that the Australians left the Grand Hotel for the ground only to collect their kitbags. Again, Bradman ‘never looked like getting out’, Warner wrote. Words were failing The Times , too, which repeated what Hendry had said, 16 months before: ‘… it will soon be difficult to know what to say of him. He is clearly a genius …’ Monty Noble warned Bradman in print against overdoing it, and suggested ‘it might be wise for him to follow Victor Trumper’s example’, from 1902, his most outstanding summer in England. After reaching his century, Trumper got runs or got out, Noble recalled, ‘with the result that he kept fresh the whole tour’. Noble meant well. At Worcester he had pointed out Monty Noble in 1902.