Bradmania still fires up the Aussies

The affliction was called "Bradmania". It meant one state of mind to the British and another to the Australians. The British were haunted by him. They needed exorcists to get rid of him. To the Aussies, however, the 'mania' meant that they cannot do without him. He was their 'black magic' for victory. The devil came in the form of an invention which earned the sobriquet "bodyline bowling".It was a dignified way of saying if you can't bowl him out, beat him, hit him or even knock him out! Kill him? Perhaps!

All this anxiety was focused around one personality. They called him "The Don" the patriarch of world cricket: the greatest batsman of all time.

In a twenty year span of Test Cricket from 1928 through 1948, he wore the crown with such a majestic gait with bat in hand that on his retirement the Australian Prime Minister called him the "greatest living Australian".

And even after his passing in 2001 at the age of 92, he still remains the pride of Australia and the most venerated of persons in the world's cricketing genre.

And so, it will be fitting as the touring Sri Lankan team straddle between Canberra where they play this week and Sydney later on, if they visit the Bradman Museum of Cricket which is located in Bowral. In the least they should doff their caps as they fly past this "shrine".

It was built to honour "the boy from Bowral". The Museum is now called "The International Cricket Hall of Fame" that perpetuates the Don's vision that "cricket continues to flourish and spread its wings. The world can only be richer for it".

And richness is the style of the Hall of Fame's get up. For those of us who visited it, it brings cricket to life through an array of displays including touch screens, massive video screens, audio renderings, film and photo galleries, and newspaper cutting, books and memorabilia.

It presents cricket in the context of world history, and, in turn, sometimes explicitly and at other times with subtlety, Sir Donald Bradman's achievements, courage, honour, integrity, humility and determination.

Don's average 99.4 runs

There is more to Don Bradman's achievements than cold statistics and recapping world records. But who could, even to this day, in the last 100 years and so far in this century and perhaps ever in the future, claim a breathtaking Test batting average of 99.4 runs in 52 tests. (Yes, this is not a typo: ninety nine point four). The case for greatness, if one needs to be made, can rest there!

And one of his achievements and legacies is how he exorcised 'the devils' that came in the form and fashion of Britain's Harold Larwood and William Voce. They did not have the stumps in mind but the body, head and soul instead. Their bowling was described as short-pitched, but that was a charitable description of the force with which the ball was hurled and made to bounce in a deadly manner. It was Bradman vs. Bodyline. In an account in the Wisden and Wikepedia it is recalled that the attack and counter attack came in dramatic form. It was the 2nd Test between Australia and England at the MCC, December 30, 1932, 80 years to this month.

Bradman had not played in the first Test due to an illness; some even suspected a nervous breakdown. England won the first test easily with "bodyline" Larwood taking 10 wickets.

The story goes that there was a public clamour for the return of Bradman into the team.

He obliged. As he walked to the crease, then world record crowd of 63,000 fans gave him a 'standing ovation that delayed play for several minutes'.Will he lash out and defeat the scourge? The report follows:

First ball duck

"Bradman anticipated receiving a bouncer as his first ball and, as the bowler delivered, he moved across his stumps to play the hook shot. The ball failed to rise and Bradman dragged it onto his stumps: the first-ball duck was his first in a Test. The crowd fell into stunned silence as he walked off." A bodyline surprise!

Australia took the lead in the first innings of the match and in the second innings, The Don rose to his true form and scored an unbeaten 103. Australia won the match.

The hope was that Bodyline was also beaten. But satanic bowling cannot be easily vanquished! The Don's retort to bodyline, as was seen in that second Test, was but one of his superior if not supernatural attributes and style.

Yes style was the man. It was Neville Cardus who, in Bradman's early days captured that style with unparalleled flourish which we quote as an object lesson for budding cricketers:

"Bradman shows us excellences which in the past we have to seek in different players; nobody else has achieved Bradman's synthesis. It is, of course, a synthesis which owes much to the fact that Bradman stays at the wicket longer than most of the brilliant stroke-players of old ever dreamed of staying. Perhaps he is marked off from greatness of his predecessors not so much by technique as by temperament".

Cardus goes on "the really astonishing fact about Bradman is that boy should play as he does-with sophistication of an old hand and brain. Who ever has heard of a young man, gifted with quick feet and eyes, with mercurial spirits and all the rapid and powerful strokes of cricket-who has ever heard of a young man so gifted and yet one who never indulged in an extravagant hit high into the air?"

"He has all the qualities of batsmanship: footwork, wrists, economy of power, and the great strokes of the game, each thoroughly under control. What then is the matter with him that we hesitate to call him a master of style, an artist who delights us, and not only a craftsman we are bound to admire without reserve? Is it that he is too mechanically faultless for sports sake?"

"He could not make a hazardous flight; he reminded me of the trapeze performer who one night decided to commit suicide by flinging himself headlong to the stage, but could not achieve the error because his skill had become infallible, a routine and mechanical habit not at the beck and call of anything so volatile as human will or impulse..... Bradman was determined to take no risks as he was to hit boundaries from every ball the least loose-his technique is so extensive and practised that he can get runs at the rate of fifty an hour without once needing to venture romantically into the realms of the speculative or the empirical."

Let generations of cricketers to come learn from this trapeze act and actor!

To contact Mohamed Muhsin e mail :

[email protected]
Or visit Http://pavilionparade.com