Appropriately,
independent India’s first Test series was against Bradman’s Australians. The
Don was a much loved and worshipped figure in India. It was said that apart
from his own country, Bradman received the most letters from India. A succession
of Indian cricketers from the captain of the 1947-48 team Lala Amarnath, to the
present demi-god Sachin Tendulkar, spoke about their admiration and awe of
Bradman, and many of them kept in regular touch with him, exchanging greetings
and letters and speaking over the phone.
The
Indian team missed a few of its top players. Vijay Merchant, who was designated
captain, had to withdraw owing to health problems, as did Rusi Modi. Mushtaq
Ali had a bereavement, while Fazal Mahmood, based in Lahore, was now a citizen
of newly-created Pakistan. A fortnight before the Test series, there was a
match between an Australian XI and the touring Indians at Sydney. Prior to this
Bradman had scored his 99th first-class century in a Sheffield
Shield game. A huge crowd congregated at the Sydney Cricket Ground in
anticipation of the great man’s 100th hundred. The Indian team
batted first and was all out for 326 on the second morning. Rob Lurie,
Australian High Commissioner in India more than half a century later, was a
wide-eyed young spectator on that historic occasion.
He
wrote in a special issue of Cricket Talk
in September 2000 to commemorate the 92nd (and as it, sadly, turned
out, last) birthday of Sir Donald Bradman: “The day was overcast. Bradman, by
his standards at least, started sedately and for much of the pre and early
after lunch sessions Miller was the dominant partner. So much so that when he
reached his half-century before Bradman and to a rapturous reaction from the
crowd, it looked as though the day belonged to Miller rather than to his
captain. But a remarkable change came over the game as Miller suddenly seemed
to appreciate this fact and went into his shell, working the strike so that
Bradman had a good deal of the bowling and limiting his own flamboyant
strokeplay to the occasional trademark and sublime cover drive. Bradman
meanwhile got on with things with superb judgement, placement and running
between the wickets until he reached 99 in the last over before tea. You can
imagine how we all felt - Bradman later wrote ‘even in the most exciting Test
match I can never remember a more emotional crowd nor a more electric
atmosphere’.“
The
High Commissioner continued: “Amarnath threw the ball to (Gogumal) Kishenchand.
In my view this was a very shrewd move as Bradman like most of us in the crowd,
had never seen him bowl, and the element of surprise can be critical at such a
moment. Bradman was very careful with the first ball but the second he played
off his pads on the on-side. As he and Miller ran through for the single, a
huge cheer engulfed the ground and the Indian team rushed to congratulate a man
they admired and liked. My family and I joined with many thousands in repeated
singing of the refrain ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.” Bradman himself recalled
that cherished instant in his Farewell to
Cricket: “Finally, with my score on 99, Amarnath called on G. Kishenchand,
who was fielding on the boundary. He had not bowled before and I had no idea
what type of bowler he was. It was a shrewd move, as one could have so easily
been deceived but I treated him with the greatest respect until eventually came
a single to mid on and the great moment had arrived.”
 |
| Don Bradman sprinting for his 100th run to complete 100 First-class Hundreds. |
High Commissioner Lurie added, “After tea Bradman cut loose and in 45 minutes scored an extraordinary, even by his standards, 72 runs marred only by the injury to a spectator by a very big six over long-on.“ Bradman revealed in Farewell to Cricket that he felt obliged to give the crowd which had so cheered his achievement some reward for its wonderful feelings towards him.
It
was unheard for anyone except those who played in English first-class cricket
to log up a hundred centuries because nowhere else were sufficient matches
played to enable a batsman achieve the feat. That Bradman reached the landmark
is hardly surprising, and this only underlines the huge gulf between him and
the others. Indeed Amarnath, in his brusque and inimitable way wrote in The Sportstar, “I always considered him
a Derby horse; the others were horses before the cart.” Of the hundredth run of
that famous innings, Raymond Robertson-Glasgow stated, “at the historical statistical
moment, when Bradman was about to go from 99 to 100 there was the Indian bowler
trying to deliver the ball with one hand and applaud with the other, a feat
that is beyond the most enthusiastic practitioner.”
To
give an idea of how difficult it was for non-English first-class batsmen to
score a hundred centuries, Bradman scored 41 tons in four English seasons, but
72 three-figure knocks in his 14 full Australian seasons, not considering his
first and last seasons, and two seasons during the war when he played just a
few games. In England he scored more than 10 hundreds per season, while in
Australia he averaged just above five centuries in a season. That was because
he played 120 innings in those four English seasons, but only 197 innings in
his 14 full Australian seasons. If Bradman was English he would have scored 200
centuries, wet wickets or otherwise. Hobbs - whose career was about a decade
longer - scored 197 hundreds in 1315 innings (a century every 6.67 innings);
Bradman hit up 117 hundreds in 338 innings (a century every 2.88 innings).
Back
to his 100th hundred, Bradman was determined to get it in that
innings. That is why he began slowly, got his eye in, assessed the wicket and the
bowling, and accelerated when well set. That is what he usually did, but on
this occasion it might have been a bit more exaggerated. Indian vice-captain
Vijay Hazare observed this tendency, and he said in an interview with Cricket Talk: “He used to take a lot of
singles and rotate the strike in the initial phase of his innings.” C.S. Nayudu
supplemented this as he told Vijay Lokapally of The Sportstar, “His footwork was lightning fast and I have not
known a batsman with a better technique and class. After the initial period
when he would gauge the pitch and the attack, it was almost impossible to
contain him.”
Author
Indra Vikram Singh can be contacted on email singh_iv@hotmail.com.
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Don’s
Century is available at an attractive price on Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/dp/8190166859
Other
books by Indra Vikram Singh available on Amazon:
A
Maharaja’s Turf https://www.amazon.in/dp/8190166832
The
Big Book of World Cup Cricket https://www.amazon.in/dp/8190166840
Crowning
Glory https://www.amazon.in/dp/8190166867
