Sir Donald Bradman, who died on February 25th aged 92, was the greatest cricketer of the 20th century and the greatest batsman who ever lived. He was also, arguably, the most famous of all Australians - and among the most influential. His batting statistics are indelible and incredible, incomparably ahead of everyone else who has played the game. He went to the crease in major cricket only 338 times, but in 117 of those innings returned with a century - a strike-rate above one in three, better than twice the ratios achieved by such greats as Jack Hobbs, Len Hutton, Walter Hammond or Denis Compton. His first-class average was 95.14; his nearest rival is on 71.
Most famously of all, he went out at the Oval in his last Test innings needing only four to finish with an average of 100, and was bowled second ball by Eric Hollies, of Warwickshire, for a duck.
He was a complex, often troubled, man. Though he achieved everyone else's fantasies, he never seemed to find true fulfilment. Yet he embodied the Australian dream. He was a country boy, born in Cootamundra in rural New South Wales; his father was a farmer and carpenter - not rich, not poor. None of his schoolfriends lived near him, so, in solitary moments, he invented a game which involved throwing a golf ball at the base of the family water tank; he then had to whack it with a cricket stump.
When he was 12, he made a 100 for Bowral High School against Mittagong. For a while, he played more tennis than cricket and seemed to be settling for a career in estate agency. However, when he was 17, he played for Bowral against Wingello, who had the ace legspin bowler Bill O'Reilly. Don Bradman was dropped twice early on off O'Reilly, who got him out first ball when the game resumed the following week. In between, he scored 234.
Next match, he scored 300. In October 1926, he was invited to Sydney to practise for the state squad; a year later, aged 19, he was in the New South Wales team, scoring a century on his debut. The following year, he scored 1,690 runs, an Australian record. By November 1928, he was in the Test team, and seared by a match which England won by 678 runs. Don Bradman made 18 and one, and was dropped. He was soon back and no one ever thought of dropping him again.
England, at this stage, was in one of its rare intervals of superiority over Australia, and had the world's leading batsman in Walter Hammond. Don Bradman scored two centuries in the series, one in defeat, one in a consolation victory. No one had the faintest idea that England would not win the Ashes again by fair means for another 24 years, and that one man would be primarily responsible for this.
They got an inkling in the first week of 1930, when Don Bradman scored 452 not out for New South Wales against Queensland. But he was still rated behind another youngster, the more stylish Archie Jackson. Don Bradman's unclassical backlift would, it was thought, find him out on soft English wickets. In the event, Jackson failed in England (he died of TB three years later) and Don Bradman's tour was a triumphal procession.
It might be easy to imagine Don Bradman from this distance as a dull and mechanical batsman. In fact, he scored his runs at a phenomenal rate; the 452 came in 415 minutes, barely imaginable today. He was the master of timing; his eye was so extraordinary that he could make up his mind what shot to play a micro-second later than anyone else; and his judgment was so impeccable that the decision was almost always right. He eliminated the risk that comes from lofting the ball, and hardly ever hit a six in consequence.
In England in 1930, he became a colossus. He began by inaugurating his tradition of an opening double-century at Worcester, and hit 1,000 runs before the end of May. In the five-match Ashes series, he scored 974, 69 more than the record set by Hammond 18 months earlier: 131 at Trent Bridge; 254 at Lord's; 334 at Headingley, and 232 at the Oval. At Headingley, he made 309 in a day; a modern Test batsman does well to score a century in that time. He returned to Australia a hero, and was greeted rapturously at every railway halt as he travelled from Fremantle along the Nullarbor Plain. His team-mates, meanwhile, were growing ever more jealous, while skirmishing also began with the Australian cricketing authorities, who fined him £50 for writing a book about the tour.
These battle lines remained in place throughout the 1930s. Still Don Bradman scored prodigiously with further double centuries against the West Indies and South Africa. Some in England thought they had spotted a weakness in him against top-class wrist-spin. But as England came to Australia in 1932-33, their new captain, Douglas Jardine, had other plans.
Thus began the most notorious Test series of all time, in which England regained the Ashes by unleashing their fast bowlers to bowl bouncers at the Australians, with a field (now illegal) concentrated behind the stumps on the leg-side; this meant the batsmen had no alternative but to fend the ball to the fieldsmen, or get hurt.
Imperialist arrogance, and poor reporting of the tour, ensured that the English Establishment and public were slow to realise the sheer degeneracy of this strategy. The initial reaction was that the Australians were whingeing, and that a way had been found to beat them again and blunt Don Bradman at last. Even in these circumstances, he averaged nearly 57.
When bodyline was repudiated, and normality restored, Don Bradman resumed his untroubled progress. He was a fraction less domineering in the remaining three Ashes series of the decade, but only a fraction. In 1934, he scored another triple-century in the Leeds Test; in 1936-37, he led Australia back from 2-0 down with triumphant performances in the last three matches; in 1938, as captain, he again scored 1,000 runs in May, and averaged more than 100 throughout.
It should have been the happiest, as well as the most triumphant, decade any sportsman has ever had. It was never quite like that. After the 1934 tour, Don Bradman was taken ill with acute appendicitis and peritonitis; he missed the 1934-35 season while recuperating. He moved from New South Wales to South Australia to accept an offer from a cricket-loving stockbroker (later jailed for fraud), which left some ill-feeling. Even the travelling got to him; he was seasick and later airsick.
And the tensions within the Australian team worsened. Don Bradman, a pernickety, nearteetotal Protestant (religion mattered in 1930s Australia), with a Calvinist work ethic, was not a natural soulmate of the witty, happy-go-lucky, left-leaning team-mates. Moreover, though his marriage to Jessie Menzies was a triumph - and was to remain so for 65 years until her death in 1997 - the Bradmans' eldest son was to live for only a few hours, their daughter, Shirley, suffered from cerebral palsy and their surviving son, John, had polio as a child. He pulled through, but later was often estranged from his father. Son and daughter survive their father.
There was some doubt that he would ever return to play for Australia in the hastily-arranged series of 1946-47. He did appear, though, and carried on where he left off, striding to 187 in the first post-war Test, more than England made in either innings. In the next game, he scored 234. And so on. In 1948, pushing 40, he came back to England for his farewell tour.
He was knighted in 1949, then slipped easily into the role of cricketing elder statesman. He gave up stockbroking and became a selector and administrator, dealing firmly with the throwing crisis that convulsed the game at the end of the 1950s. He played golf, off scratch (of course), remaining rooted all the time to his marriage and suburban home in Adelaide.
Donald George Bradman: born 1908; died, February 2001