The Boy from Bowral
Our Special Correspondent
In the death of Sir Don Bradman this morning, the world has lost the greatest cricketer of all time -- and possibly the greatest sportsman, too.
Every sport has its mascot, a person who towers over others by the scale of his accomplishments, and inspires awe even among his peers. But every sport has its little points of disputes, too. Footballers are forever squabbling over who was better, Maradona or Pele? Chess players wonder if Kasparov was a greater genius than Fischer. But in cricket, Sir Don was the last word. There has never been one like him in the last five decades, and there will never be another in the next five centuries. That is the magic of the Boy from Bowral (1908-2001).
Numbers don’t lie, and in the case of Sir Don, they scream the truth. A grand total of 50,731 runs in all matches at an average of 90.27. A total of 28,067 runs in all first-class matches at an average of 95.1. A total of 6,996 runs in Test matches at an average of 99.94. When modern-day commentators speculate over who is No.1, Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Lara, Sunil Gavaskar or Viv Richards, they are in effect only debating who is No.2. With all his averages in the 90s (only his dismissal for zero prevented his Test average from hitting 100), Sir Don is insurmountably above and ahead of the rest -- and it is only fitting that he should have run out of life at the age of 92.
The only Australian cricketer ever to be knighted, Sir Don scored a century every third time he went out to bat, and in all scored 211 of them (29 in Tests, 117 in first-class matches). Today’s sceptics point out that Sir Don’s great run came against just four countries (in 37 Tests against England, and five each against South Africa, West Indies and India) and only in a handful of grounds. Would he have been so successful in this day and age, they ask? But they forget that his runs and tons came on uncovered pitches, when batsmen played without helmets. Has any country ever adopted a strategy to stop a single batsman, as England employed Bodyline to stop Bradman?
Although he never played in India (he only once stopped by in Bombay on the way to England), Sir Don’s death casts a long shadow over the first Test commencing in Mumbai tomorrow. Steve Waugh and his men will doubtless wear those black bands around their shirt sleeves, but Saurav Ganguly and his boys would do well to follow suit. That is the best tribute India can pay to a gentleman-cricketer who said that the one batsman who batted like him was an Indian: Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
“No violent passion, no harmful deed, no revengeful spirit and no harm to any fellow man can be ascribed to the life of Bradman. This is an exemplification of the basic appeal of cricket,“ said a British Minister of State in 1948.
Sir Donald Bradman, Rest in Peace.
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