It was a momentous
tour. Having played a pivotal role in winning the Ashes, Bradman scored an
unprecedented 974 runs in the series, still unequalled to this day, at an
average of 139.14. He got all these runs at 40 an hour without hitting a six.
Rarely did Bradman loft the ball. Some felt that this aggregate was the
equivalent of Sydney Barnes’ feat of 49 wickets in four Tests against South
Africa in 1913-14, but against better opposition. No other batsman from either
side got even half of Bradman’s tally, nor even more than one hundred. Mammoth
scores kept coming repeatedly from his willow like giant waves slapping the
shore – a century, two double centuries and a triple century. The double
hundreds decided the series. Without doubt the English would need to introspect
deeply. C.B. Fry, himself a man of many parts and incredibly talented, was
enchanted with Bradman’s display: “I wish I could have used my bat like Don. He
is a gem of a batsman. I just love his finished technique and inevitable
surety.”
As much as the runs
that he scored, Bradman filled the counties’ coffers as never before. Jon Stock
related a tale, perhaps apocryphal, in The
Week: “Don was the bane of every bowler’s life, but he was also a
commercial opportunity. Dai Davies, a Glamorgan player, recalls how he once
came close to bowling Bradman in 1930. He was flabbergasted when instead of
encouraging him, his captain Maurice Turnbull told Davies that his services
wouldn’t be required that day. ‘But I’ll get him out the next over,’ Davies
pleaded. ‘That’s what we don’t want,’ Turnbull replied. ‘Can’t you see, we’ve
got to keep him in for Monday (the August bank holiday)?’ Glamorgan made a
small profit at the end of that year thanks entirely to that game’s proceeds.”
By the final Test,
his ninth, Bradman had reached an average of 100, and had as many as six
three-figure knocks. His aggregate now stood at 1442 runs, the average 103. In
all first-class matches during that tour of 1930, Bradman hit up 2960 runs, the
most any visiting batsman has done, and notched up 10 hundreds. He topped the
averages among all batsmen during that season at 98.66, which he did on all his
tours to England. If anybody had lingering doubts about Bradman’s ability to
cope with English conditions, they had been dispelled in the most vehement
manner possible. From now on batting had only one don, perhaps forever. That Wisden selected Bradman as one of its
cricketers of the year in its 1931 edition is only stating the obvious. A most
telling comment came from the great allrounder Wilfred Rhodes, a shrewd judge
of the game, and not one to shower praise lightly: “I bowled against all the
best from 1900 to 1930 - Hobbs, Trumper, Grace and Ranji among them and many,
many more - but Bradman was the greatest.”
Ian Peebles, who
bowled to Bradman during this series, wrote in the World of Cricket: “It was not until the series got underway that
the cricket world gradually realised that this young man Bradman had
inaugurated a new era and somewhat reinterpreted the old adage that ‘bowlers
win matches’. Never before had an individual batsman so consistently given
bowlers the opportunity of winning matches by the speed and extent of his
scoring.”
Financially, the tour
brought Bradman a bonanza. In addition to the ₤ 600 paid by The Board of
Control for the six-month effort, which was easily double an average annual
wage at the time, and the reward of ₤ 1000 bestowed on him by Arthur Whitelaw,
was the contract for his first book Don
Bradman’s Book of Cricket and its serialisation in the press. Bradman’s
earnings came to a whopping ₤ 5000.
Don
Bradman was now a folk hero in Australia, and he began receiving several offers
for commercial endorsements. ‘Bradmania’ had besieged the minds of his
countrymen. Whenever word spread that Bradman was at Mick Simmons, huge crowds
would congregate outside. It was not long before a musical tribute was paid to
him. ‘Our Don Bradman’ was an affectionate tune that became popular in the
1930s. Described as a ‘snappy fox trot song’, it hailed ‘Australia’s batting
phenomenon’. Deft pianist that he was, Bradman himself composed a song ‘Every
Day is a Rainbow Day for Me’.
(Author Indra Vikram Singh can be contacted
on email singh_iv@hotmail.com).
Don’s Century
Published
by Sporting Links
ISBN
978-81-901668-5-0, Fully Illustrated
French
Fold 21.5 cm x 28 cm, 188 Pages
Price
Rupees 995
Indra
Vikram Singh’s latest books published by Sporting Links:
A
Maharaja’s Turf ISBN 978-81-901668-3-6
The
Big Book of World Cup Cricket ISBN 978-81-901668-4-3
Don’s
Century ISBN 978-81-901668-5-0
Crowning Glory ISBN
978-81-901668-6-7
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