48 Fun Facts About Don Bradman

Which modern batsman did Bradman say batted most like he himself had?

Sachin Tendulkar: struck by his compact technique, Bradman asked his wife to take a look and she agreed they batted alike; on his 90th birthday he had Tendulkar and Shane Warne to his home.

How many runs did Bradman need in his final Test innings to finish with an average of exactly 100?

Four: he made a duck instead and finished on 99.94, and because England then lost by an innings he never got a second chance to bat.

Which England bowler dismissed Bradman for a duck in his final Test innings, at The Oval in 1948?

Eric Hollies bowled him second ball with a googly, moments after the crowd had stood to applaud him all the way to the crease and England's players had gathered to cheer him.

Bradman is known as the Boy from Bowral, but in which New South Wales town was he actually born?

Cootamundra: his family left the district for Bowral when he was two, so the town where he learned the game, not the one where he was born, gave him his nickname.

What did the young Bradman practise with against a water tank?

A golf ball and a cricket stump: the ball flew back off the tank's brick stand fast and at odd angles, and hitting it with so thin a bat is credited with sharpening his eye and footwork.

In 1926 Bradman's boss allowed him one week off, forcing him to choose between cricket and which other sport?

Tennis: he had all but dropped cricket for it for two years and was picked for Country Week in both sports; with leave for only one he chose cricket, and a Sydney club invited him soon after.

For which Sydney grade club did Bradman play from 1926-27, travelling 130 km each Saturday?

St George: in his first game for the club he made 110, the first century he had ever scored on a turf pitch, and he kept up the weekly train trip from Bowral until he moved to Sydney.

What happened to Bradman after making 18 and 1 on Test debut in 1928?

He was dropped to twelfth man for the second Test after Australia's heavy defeat; recalled at Melbourne for the third, he answered with 79 and 112, his first Test century.

Whose first-class world record of 437 did Bradman break with 452 not out against Queensland in 1930?

Bill Ponsford's 437 had stood for two years when Bradman set out to beat it; he got there in only 415 minutes, and his 452 not out remained the record until 1959.

Which England batsman's record of 905 runs in a Test series did Bradman beat with 974 in 1930?

Wally Hammond had piled up his 905 in Australia in 1928-29, the series of Bradman's debut; Bradman took the record from him on English soil at an average of 139.14, and no one has passed 974 since.

At which ground did Bradman score his world-record 334 in 1930?

Headingley: he reached his century before lunch on the first day, and four years later he went back to the Leeds ground and made 304, his second Test triple century.

Which innings did Bradman call technically the best of his life?

254 at Lord's in 1930: he rated it above the 334 he made in the very next Test, saying almost every ball went where he meant it to, and it set up the win that levelled the series.

On a 1932 tour of North America, which baseball legend did Bradman watch a Yankees game with?

Babe Ruth sat with him at a Yankees game in New York; the private tour of Canada and the United States, 51 matches in 75 days, doubled as a honeymoon for Bradman and his new wife.

Which England captain devised the Bodyline tactics to curb Bradman in 1932-33?

Douglas Jardine had noticed Bradman's unease against short balls at The Oval in 1930, so he married leg theory to fast bowling aimed at the body; it cut Bradman's series average to 56.

Which two Nottinghamshire fast bowlers were the spearheads of Bodyline?

Harold Larwood and Bill Voce: asked afterwards to apologise for his bowling, Larwood refused, saying he had done what his captain told him; he never played for England again and later emigrated to Australia.

How was Bradman out first ball in his first innings of the 1932-33 Bodyline series?

Dragged a hook onto his stumps: expecting a bouncer from Bill Bowes he stepped across, but the ball stayed low and the huge Melbourne crowd fell silent; he made 103 not out in the second innings.

Which Australian captain's leaked Bodyline remark said only one of the two teams was playing cricket?

Bill Woodfull had been struck over the heart that day when he rebuked England's tour manager in the Adelaide dressing room; the team-mate blamed for the leak spent years insisting the culprit was Bradman.

Whom did Bradman marry at Burwood, Sydney, in April 1932?

Jessie Menzies had boarded with the Bradmans as a schoolgirl, so the pair had known each other since childhood; the marriage lasted 65 years, until her death in 1997.

What nearly killed Bradman at the end of the 1934 tour of England?

Appendicitis and peritonitis left him close to death in a London hospital; his wife set off at once on the month-long journey from Australia and learned on the way that the crisis had passed.

What job offer in 1934 lured Bradman from Sydney to Adelaide?

Stockbroker: Harry Hodgetts, an Adelaide broker who sat on cricket's Board of Control, signed him to a six-year contract that guaranteed him time off to play.

What happened in 1945 to the firm of Bradman's employer, Harry Hodgetts?

It collapsed through fraud and embezzlement and Hodgetts went to prison; Bradman opened his own firm in the same building, and though the investigation cleared him, some in the city long suspected he had known.

What surprising finding did a routine army medical make about Bradman during World War II?

He had poor eyesight, the army check found, to general surprise given his batting; worse, fibrositis grew so acute that he could not shave or comb his own hair, and he was invalided out.

What nickname was given to the Australian team Bradman captained on the 1948 tour of England?

The Invincibles: on his farewell tour, in the summer he turned 40, Bradman had made it known he wanted to go through England unbeaten, and his side became the first Australian team ever to do it.

Who in 1983 first passed Bradman's record of 29 Test centuries?

Sunil Gavaskar drew level with a hundred off 94 balls against the West Indies fast bowlers at Delhi, then went past the Don with an unbeaten 236 at Madras two months later.

Bradman is the only Australian cricketer ever to receive which honour?

A knighthood: it came in the New Year Honours of 1949, weeks before he bowed out, so he played his last two first-class matches as a knight of the realm.

Which future Test bowler played for Wingello when Bradman made 234 against them as a bush cricketer?

Bill O'Reilly had the last word: when the match resumed the following Saturday he bowled Bradman first ball, and the two, Test team-mates for years, never did get along.

Which South African leader is said to have first asked an Australian visitor whether Bradman was still alive?

Nelson Mandela put the question to former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, by most accounts on a 1986 prison visit; Fraser later gave him a bat Bradman had signed 'in recognition of a great unfinished innings'.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's postal address in every capital city is GPO Box what?

9994 mirrors his Test batting average of 99.94; the ABC says its national GPO Box number was taken from the figure.

Bradman's grandson Nick made the front page of The Advertiser in 2017 for what?

A university entrance score of 99.95 is the highest rank a South Australian school leaver can get, and it put him one hundredth of a point above the batting average his grandfather made famous.

What gift awaited Bradman after his 1930 homecoming parade?

A Chevrolet, custom-built, from a General Motors pageant that carried him home city by city apart from his team-mates; the fuss embarrassed him and soured his standing in the dressing room.

Which Prime Minister called Bradman 'the greatest living Australian'?

John Howard said it in 1997 as he launched Australia Post's Australian Legends stamps, a yearly series honouring living Australians that began with Bradman.

Which indoor racquet sport did Bradman take up in his late twenties and promptly win the South Australian championship in?

Squash: he took the game up while his cricket was at its peak and soon won the state title; the same man played golf off scratch and was a fine billiards player.

Which Australian singer-songwriter released the song 'Bradman' in 1987?

Paul Kelly's epic runs past seven minutes and follows the batsman from his first Tests to Bodyline; the last hit about him, 'Our Don Bradman' in 1930, had sold 40,000 copies of sheet music within days.

Which instrument did Bradman play on several recordings he made in the early 1930s?

Piano: he played well enough to entertain team-mates on tour and to cut records at the height of his fame, and he went on playing and composing for the rest of his life.

At which ground did Bradman, aged 12, tell his father he would never be satisfied until he played there?

The Sydney Cricket Ground: his father had taken him to the fifth Ashes Test of 1921, and within a decade he had made a world-record 452 not out on the same turf.

Against which county did Bradman open three successive tours of England with a double century?

Worcestershire: critics said he would fail on slow English pitches, and he answered with 236 there in his first innings in the country in 1930, then 206 in 1934 and 258 in 1938.

What kind of pitches shaped Bradman's early technique in the Berrima District competition?

Matting over concrete made the ball bounce high and true, so he grew up playing the pull, hook and cut with a cross bat, the style England's bowlers first thought would make him an easy target.

With whom did Bradman share a record 346-run partnership while batting through influenza at Melbourne in 1937?

Jack Fingleton: on a rain-ruined pitch Bradman sent his bowlers in first and held himself back to number seven, and once it dried the pair put on 346; Australia won, and took the series from 0-2 down.

In a 1931 country match against Lithgow, Bradman hit 100 runs in the space of how many eight-ball overs?

3 overs was all it took: he made 100 of the 102 runs added in them, on his way to 256 in a second-class match that has been retold ever since.

Which Australian captain declared overnight on 334 not out in Pakistan, level with Bradman's highest Test score?

Mark Taylor batted two days at Peshawar and, with the world record of 375 within reach on a flat pitch, closed the innings the next morning and left himself level with the Don.

Which England opener made a Test-record 364 against Bradman's Australians at The Oval in 1938?

Len Hutton wore the bowling down so far that Bradman took a rare turn with the ball himself, broke his ankle and was carried off; unable to bat, he watched Australia lose by an innings and 579 runs.

Bradman is said to be the subject of more biographies than any Australian except which figure?

Ned Kelly, the bushranger, is the one Australian counted ahead of him, outlaw before batsman; Bradman added four books of his own to the shelf, the last of them the 1958 manual The Art of Cricket.

Bradman's 100th first-class century, in November 1947, came against which side on its first tour of Australia?

India's bowlers saw him make 172 for an Australian XI in Sydney; with the hundredth hundred banked he threw his wicket away, then took 715 more runs off them in the five Tests.

To what did Bradman's son John legally change his surname in 1972 to escape the family name?

Bradsen: a law lecturer in Adelaide, he said he was only asking to be given a break; he took the old name back towards the end of his father's life, and his father was delighted.

Which West Indian did Bradman reportedly name to South Africa's John Vorster in 1971 to rebut a slur on black cricketers?

Garry Sobers had the last word: with the South African tour called off, he led the Rest of the World side that replaced it and made 254 in Melbourne, which Bradman rated probably the best innings seen in Australia.

Which actor played Bradman in the 1984 television mini-series about the Bodyline tour?

Gary Sweet played the batsman opposite a young Hugo Weaving as England's captain, fifteen years before The Matrix made Weaving a worldwide name.

Which opener's 182 helped Bradman chase a record 404 in 1948?

Arthur Morris hit 33 fours to Bradman's 29 as England's bowlers served up full tosses on a worn pitch; the pair put on 301 and Australia got home with 15 minutes to spare.

Which Australian captain did Bradman urge to play attractive cricket before the 1960-61 series against the West Indies?

Richie Benaud obliged: the series opened in Brisbane with the first tied Test in history, just the kind of cricket Bradman the selector had wanted after the slow scoring of the 1950s.