Sure enough, it pitched exactly where I had anticipated, and, hooking it to the square-leg boundary, I established the only record upon which I had set my heart.' 'Donning' the Baggy Green Bradman was handed his Test debut on a sticky dog of a wicket in Brisbane, and went on to score 18 and 1 across innings, resulting in a record that still stands - a 675-run loss for Australia against England and a subsequent axing from the side. I seemed to sense that the ball would be a short-pitched one on the leg-stump, and I could almost feel myself getting ready to make my shot. Bradman, later, mentioned that he’d had his eyes on the record.
At the age of 19, the diminutive-but-precocious baby of Australian cricket, Donald George, was handed a First-class debut for New South Wales, and he immediately made an impact, scoring 118 in Sydney on the very day Bill Ponsford, in a different game, set the highest First-class score of 437 for Victoria against Tasmania - a record Bradman would eventually break a couple of years later in Sydney against Queensland with a mammoth 452, which would stand for nearly 30 years. There was a murmur around the cricketing fraternity about a small-towner from Bowral, and Bradman was invited for practice at the St. After scoring his first hundred at his school in Bowral at the age of twelve, he went on to score double hundreds and triple hundreds, finishing the 1925 season with a typically Bradmanesque average of 101.3. Big Beginnings Unsurprisingly, Bradman was a prodigy from the school level. I found I had to be pretty quick on my feet and keep my wits about me, and in this way I developed, unconsciously, perhaps, sense of distance and pace'. In other words, he never expected true bounce out of the wicket and had quick enough reflexes, to react to the quicker pace of a golf ball with the narrower bat than a cricket bat, and from a distance of about 2 yards… 'The small bat made this no easy matter as the ball came back at great speed and, of course, at widely different angles. A rather simplistic technique by today’s standards, Bradman attributes his astute judgement and his quick reaction time to the historic tank stand, now a cricketing relic, and mentions that he seldom expected a ball to behave. In his old family home, Bradman would toss a golf ball against a corrugated tank stand, allowing it to reach him quickly and at unexpected angles, thereby developing quick reflexes by hitting them right back at the tank and in the process, developing a typical bottom-handed driving technique and getting more efficient with time. The Holy Trinity It all started with a stump, a golf ball and a tank stand.
As opposed to the asymptotic greats, The Don was so far beyond the everyday batsman that more than a hundred years on, there isn’t a player who has come within an arm's distance of his Test average - Ninety-nine point nine four. He was often revered as a god in Australian cricket and went on to form a team that came to be known as the Invincibles. In 52 Test matches over 20 years and a World War, Sir Don Bradman transcended the pinnacle of batsmanship, and then some, to an extent that is deemed insurmountable to this day.
Once upon a time, more than a century ago, in the small town of Cootamundra, New South Wales, Donald George was born - the man who set such high standards of batting in his time, that the phrase 'second only to The Don' has become a part of cricketing jargon. None, however, have managed to stretch the imagination and drop jaws like the timeless giant who eclipsed the contemporaries of his domain across generations. Some who have achieved numerous moments of glory for their team, and others who have confounded of statisticians and romantics alike. In a nutshell The sport of cricket has seen several good players, and a few rare great players. The spectators would be clapping, not for the man going off, or the bowler the applause was one of anticipation. Celebrations were muted, and voices hushed, in the face of their inevitable doom. It was an era, when the fall of the first Australian wicket spelt catastrophe for the bowlers.