Sir Don Bradman's the ultimate hero

Myth has it how, from the moment the shepherd boy David killed the bully Goliath with his slingshot, a nation found a hero.

There have, of course, been other heroes. Xenonophon, of Corinth, it is said is the first of the great ancient Olympic Games icons, winning the short sprint and the pentathlon on the same day at the games of 484 BC.

While others have had their moment(s) of glory, there are those who have been part of sport and life’s arena and landscape for decades, and as such have inspired a nation throughout a lifetime of trepidation, trauma and golden success.

History though also explains how sport had been part of the cultural baggage that went to Australia with the convicts. Not that the man who became Sir Donald Bradman and born 100 years ago comes from such a background. His grandfather was from rural Suffolk and his migration was due to the goldrush era of the 1850s.

It explains how Bradman came from ordinary folk and not a privilege class; how he grew up in a rural Australian society that already had heroes. Some were rouges like Ned Kelly, others were transient characters, and there had been the legendary New Zealand bred racehorse Phar Lap.

During the depression years and through the 1930s, Australia sought another hero, and as cricket so dominated the sports landscape of the country that from the 1930 tour of England and his batting achievements they found a new one.

Even before that tour his reputation had grown and he had an effect on an already nascent career: an innings of 452 against Queensland in Sydney in the 1929-30 season was a prelude to that 1930 England tour.

My own memory of Bradman was as teenager on a brief visit to Sydney in February 1949 at the end of the 1948-49 season. It is where my grandfather visited friends and I was taken to the Sydney Cricket Ground and with the son of a legal colleague we sat on the famed “Hill” below the giant scoreboard. The game was the Kippax-Oldfield testimonial and his farewell game in Sydney.

Fuzzy memory recalls him pulling and cutting as well as deftly pushing the ball into the gaps. Yet he was no classic stylist as such and there is far more to his career than statistics and scoring centuries at a faster rate than many at the time.

There are though stories around the man they called The Don and happily linger in the game’s folklore.

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