Don Bradman, born to conquer
Even as the trees waited to shed their leaves in the English autumn of 1930, Don Bradman had achieved everything a batsman could ever dream of. He had broken the records for the highest individual scores in first-class as well as Test cricket. His Test average had breached the hundred mark, and he had taken a mere seven Tests to log up a thousand runs.
While helping Australia wrest back the Ashes - inarguably the championship of Test cricket then - he had aggregated an unprecedented 974 runs in that five-Test series.
In a matter of nine Tests, he had scored three centuries, two double centuries, and a triple century. Such was his phenomenal run scoring that the Don had already amassed more runs in an Australian season than anyone, and more than any visiting batsman in an English season, before or since.
In the midst of all these mind-boggling feats, he had also found the time to write his first book - Don Bradman’s Book of Cricket. He was just 22 years old then. Whatever Bradman did thereafter on the cricket field was just repetition.
First name in any All Time XI is always Bradman
Whenever a group of cricket fanatics sit down to select an All Time XI, the first name on the sheet is always Bradman, followed by Sir Garfield Sobers.
Then start the arguments, mostly impassioned and unresolved. At times, there have been countless discussions about the merits of great batsmen like WG Grace, Ranji Singh, Victor Trumper, Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond, George Headley, Len Hutton and others. The point of discussion has been whether some of them were better than Bradman in one respect or another.
But in the end, there is the inevitable conclusion that Don Bradman was indeed the best, and by a long way. As Wally Hammond, Bradman’s great adversary, once put it wryly:
“If I were choosing a side out of all the cricketers who ever lived, I would put Bradman’s name down first. None of us had the measure of him and that’s the plain fact.”
Such were his feats with the willow that ages ago, someone coined a new word: Bradmanesque. Much water has flowed down the Torrens since young Don Bradman scorched the turfs of Australia and England. Yet, none has been able to commit the sacrilege of emulating Bradmanesque deeds.
Herculean tasks might be achieved, but a Bradmanesque average remains well-nigh unattainable.
Don Bradman never received formal coaching, practised by himself
Don Bradman was precociously talented and completely focussed. Though he never received any formal coaching, it is well chronicled how he would practice all by himself.
As a young kid, he would endlessly keep hitting a golf ball against a circular brick tank stand with a stump, while having a kerosene can as the wicket. Such a single-minded endeavour helped develop strong powers of concentration and a keen sense of timing.
He learnt how to hit the ball coming at him at various angles, different speeds, and varying degrees of bounce. The exercise also helped build up physical strength and footwork. Anyone who has tried out this routine would know how difficult it is. But Don, with his perseverance, keen ball sense, and hand-eye co-ordination - much touted today - mastered it.
Such exertion made it so much easier for him to strike the much larger and considerably less volatile cricket ball with a significantly broader blade of the cricket bat.
The sheer diligence, dedication, resolve to excel, and drive to achieve perfection were apparent from a tender age, These qualities impelled Don Bradman to take one giant stride after another in his cricketing journey.
Years later, AG Moyes, well-known cricket writer and New South Wales selector when Bradman made his way into the team, wrote in his book - Bradman:
“He was richly-endowed in skill by nature, but he did not rest on that, for he wanted earnestly always to build on the foundation. His batting rested on the sound basis of common sense, and there were few riddles he did not know the answer."
Moyes continued:
"He practised consistently and methodically, as does the professional pianist who knows that his success depends on the suppleness of his fingers and certainty of his touch. No man can reach the dizzy heights without this painstaking devotion to his art, and in cricket’s long pilgrimage no one has striven harder to reach perfection.”
(Excerpt from Indra Vikram Singh’s book ‘Don’s Century’).