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Overview
To mark the 25th anniversary milestone at a time when the eyes of the cricketing world will be on Australia, this book reveals for the first time in print the founding treasure of the Bradman Museum: the Don's personal collection of 35 mm slides. With Bradman's typed commentary and handwritten amendments alongside, the slides showcase the history of cricket, from its agrarian beginnings in England to its status as a game of Empire, fit for introduction to the colonies. Grace, Hobbs, Hendren, Larwood, O'Reilly, McCabe, Lindwall, Trueman—on these legends and many more Bradman gives us his opinion with characteristic directness. We gain insight into the game as he saw it in all its magic. While Bradman's personal slide collection forms the centerpiece of this stunning collection, the work of three of cricket's greatest photographers are also featured. Among Bruce Postle's black and white photos from the 1960s and 1970s are iconic shots that will thrill any cricket lover. Vivian Jenkins' work brings to life the drama of the 1970s and World Series Cricket, while Philip Brown's camera ranges across international cricket up to the present day. This treasure trove of cricket is woven seamlessly together by the matchless commentary of Mike Coward, one of Australia's most acclaimed experts.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781743439753 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 116 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Bradman Museum's: World of Cricket
By Mike Coward, Philip Brown
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2015 Mike Coward and the Bradman MuseumAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74343-975-3
CHAPTER 1
PART 1
Donald Bradman's Slide Collection
Sliding Through History DAVID WELLS
Stored carefully among other collection items at the Bradman Museum, where I started as curator in 2002, was a small, innocuous-looking cream suitcase. Inside the suitcase was a collection of 35 mm black-and-white slides. These were arrayed in plastic boxes, with the scene depicted in each slide described in Bradman's own clear prose — page after page of typed foolscap notes, along with amendments, crossings-out, asterisks, and additional comments and clarifications scrawled in blue pen. Clearly Bradman had gone back to his notes again and again, reading and re-reading, finessing the detail ahead of presentations he'd deliver from his home in Adelaide.
What struck me was Bradman's decisiveness, his perceptiveness, the sheer entertainment of his writing. The slides told the history of cricket, tracing the game's rudimentary beginnings in agrarian England through its formalisation by the aristocracy to its eventual status as a game of Empire, fit for introduction to the colonies. They ended, 136 slides later, with portraits of Test players Bradman had read about, played with or seen: Grace, Hobbs, Hendren, Larwood, O'Reilly, McCabe, Lindwall, Trueman ... With characteristic directness, Bradman would venture his opinion on their prowess. Immediately I recognised the importance of the slides, their potential to publicly shed further light on Bradman's own character and cricket knowledge. Way back in 1930, when a young female cricketer Norene 'Girlie' Harding wrote to congratulate Bradman's mother Emily on her son's performance in that winter's Ashes series, Emily wrote back: 'I am very proud of Don. He is not only a good cricketer but has always been a good-living boy.'
The quote is instructive, and any study of Don Bradman's character begins with his mother and father, Emily and George. Of paramount importance to Emily was the way the 'boy' conducted himself. His taking apart of England's cricket team and the consequent outpouring of national jubilation were secondary. Strict by today's standards, Emily and George were resolutely supportive of their three girls and two boys, raising them in an environment of hard work, family pride, Christian values and music. The violin and piano were favoured instruments. Sing-a-longs in the Bradman family home at 20 Glebe Street, Bowral, were fondly recalled by neighbours and family members alike. Throughout Bradman's life, making and listening to music would prove powerful rejuvenating forces.
George Bradman was a respected carpenter and fence builder who worked in a timber yard. Tall and austere, he walked to and from work in an immaculate three-piece suit. Emily ran the home, like most women of her day, in between managing five busy children. Both parents came from families where cricket was regularly played and keenly discussed. Emily's brothers Richard and George Whatman were enthusiastic local cricketers, and Emily bowled her own left-arm deliveries at her youngest son in the backyard after school. 'First my parents taught me to be a cricketer off the field,' Bradman would recall in Farewell to Cricket, 'as well as on. It was not "did you win" but did you play the game that made the man.'
Don had an inquiring mind. Whatever task confronted him in life, he would apply himself to understanding utterly the challenge at his feet and taking decisive action to master it. As a boy he had left school at fourteen because the district had no senior high school, and started work at a Bowral stock and station agency. Somewhat self-conscious about his truncated education, he offset this perceived inadequacy partly through reading. He read widely about cricket — decades later, aware of the cricketing education books could provide, he insisted that a publicly accessible research library be part of the Bradman Museum's charter. He watched his father and uncles play the game and played himself, whenever he could, in the Bowral men's senior team. From a young age he learned not just about the physical and social enjoyment that cricket provided but the game's wider context.
His parents' influence instilled in him a sense of duty. Cricket, he marvelled, had given a boy from the country so much opportunity — international and domestic travel, meeting the rich and famous, a chance to test his skills against the world's finest players. These experiences left him duty-bound, he felt, to use his considerable influence to promote and develop the game that he loved. The Bradman Slide Collection is one small poignant example. Compiled in the shadow of his stellar on-field career, in between business directorships and cricket administration responsibilities, the slides demonstrate Bradman's lifelong interest in the fundamentals of cricket and the game's intriguing history. Meticulously and insightfully he reviews cricket's evolution, often in a jaunty and humorous style, and always exuding a palpable enthusiasm for the game being played to its most sublime standard:
SLIDE NO. 129 The finest picture of a fast bowler I've ever seen. Frank Tyson in an astounding position after delivering the ball. You couldn't possibly generate more power from the human frame than this.
SLIDE NO. 130 As a change from bowling actions, here is my favourite batting photo. Wally Hammond in all his majesty, executing a perfect cover drive. That picture is magnificent.
SLIDE NO. 134 Back to bowlers. The man whom old timers rank as the greatest of all — S.F. Barnes. Against South Africa in 1913/14 he took 49 wickets in the first 4 Tests and couldn't play in the 5th owing to illness. This performance has never been approached by anyone else.
SLIDE NO. 135 I never saw Barnes bowl, but my own choice for the greatest of all falls on Bill O'Reilly. This is a fine action study of O'Reilly. Power and control simply ooze out of that picture.
SLIDE NO. 136 In this next study of O'Reilly can't you feel the tenacity and ferocity of the fellow? Bill had the lot.
Bradman's references to O'Reilly show his enduring respect for the great bowler. He was never too proud to let off-field personal differences between the two men cloud his judgement.
SLIDE NO. 5 Neither do I know how the bishops of today would react if they saw this advertisement involving the Church of England in these professional activities.
It is on record that the Old Etonians played England for £1,500 a side. Bats were then 4/6 each. Taking the value of a bat today as a guide, it was equivalent to playing for a sum of over $100,000 in today's money.
A fascinating window into Bradman's interests and what he considered important opens up through the pictures he selects and comments on. His allusion to big amounts changing hands for an eighteenth-century match is a reminder of how money has always been part of the game. As an administrator Bradman was almost obsessively vigilant about the influence of money on players. To him, income was more appropriately made through a recognised profession or trade. His own relocation bore testimony to this belief, Bradman moving from New South Wales to South Australia to take up a trainee position with Harry Hodgetts' stockbroking firm in 1934 — a time, ironically, when he was one of the few cricketers in the world who could probably have made a decent living from cricket. But for Bradman, as he repeatedly wrote and said, cricket was a pastime to be played and enjoyed for the game's sake.
* * *
Bradman was besieged all his adult life with requests to speak publicly, and he did so selectively. The slides were to illustrate talks for audiences with whom Bradman chose to share his knowledge in the 1960s and '70s. He had honed his oratory skills during his time as Australian captain. A superb judge of an audience, Bradman combined incisive and thoroughly researched information with humour, timing and wit.
SLIDE NO. 87 A man well known to South Australians, not only as an English international but because he came to Adelaide and coached South Australian players in the 1920's — Patsy Hendren.
Patsy once dropped an easy catch in the outfield and a spectator yelled out 'I could have caught it in my mouth.' Patsy hastily replied 'If I had a mouth as big as yours, so could I.'
SLIDE NO. 133 I've included this one of Arthur Wood, the England and Yorkshire wicketkeeper, just to tell you a story.
Arthur went in to bat for England at The Oval in 1938 with the score 770 for 6. He made 53 and got out with the score 876 for 7.
As he entered the pavilion an admirer shouted 'Well played Arthur.' Arthur looked up and replied 'Thanks — I'm always at my best in a crisis.'
Another slide, using brevity to excellent effect, sketches the infamous inflictor of Bodyline bowling on Australian batsmen during the 1932–33 Ashes series:
SLIDE NO. 88 Of later vintage and lesser humour, Douglas Jardine. You can tell by looking at the picture there wasn't much compromise about him.
Bradman's notes contain frequent comparisons between past and present. The evolution of player attire interested him. No fewer than eleven slides — under the subheading 'Cricket Dress' — are dedicated to the subject.
SLIDE NO. 24 ... We come to a more eloquent dress worn about the beginning of the 17th century.
The usage of breeches, silk stockings, buckled shoes, frilled shirts and peculiar hats followed.
SLIDE NO. 25 The latter are in evidence in this view of a game in progress in the year of 1740.
SLIDE NO. 26 Twenty years later, here is a sample of the cricket dress of the day.
SLIDE NO. 30 ... About 1810 trousers began to replace breeches. Braces were often used.
SLIDE NO. 31 And what braces they were. Have a look at those worn by William Lillywhite about 1827. His name on cricket bats was once as famous as any of the modern makes, and he was the originator of the famous Lillywhite's Annual ...
SLIDE NO. 32 Then came the colour fashion. Bow ties, spotted shirts and billy cock hats became the rage.
Oxford wore dark blue shirts. Cambridge light blue.
The Harlequins wore blue trousers.
I understand that Rugby School still retains the fashion of a colored shirt.
SLIDE NO. 33 About 1900 the dress changed to something like the modern attire and there have been no major changes since, except perhaps the move towards colored clothing for television purposes in the limited over games.
Possibly the most intriguing, insightful descriptions adorn Bradman's playing contemporaries, such as his tribute to fellow batting star Archie Jackson, who died of tuberculosis at 23:
SLIDE NO. 106 Archie Jackson. He made a wonderful 164 at Adelaide in 1929 in his first Test. I batted with him that day. Three years later I was one of those who carried him to his last resting place. It all happened because he placed his love of cricket before his health.
SLIDE NO. 113 Bill Johnston. I want you to look carefully at these two slides. In the first one, notice the gay carefree abandon of his youthful action. Now look at the second one ...
SLIDE NO. 114 Quite obviously his delivery is tight — not free. It is all because he has changed his foot position to try and protect his knee which had developed cartilage trouble after an injury in England.
Two England bowlers, who he encountered at the start and end of his career, are singled out for detailed comparison: Maurice Tate and Alec Bedser. Bedser was the only man to dismiss Bradman twice for a Test duck.
SLIDE NO. 118 Possibly the two greatest medium pace bowlers of all time were Tate and Bedser. Their actions were not very similar to watch on the cricket field but in basic principles they were very much alike. Here is Bedser coming into the delivery stride ...
SLIDE NO. 119 Maurice Tate is shown doing the same thing but the photo has been taken a fraction of a second earlier.
SLIDE NO. 120 There is a greater similarity between the next two pictures. First Bedser as he delivers the ball. You will find it is almost identical with this ...
SLIDE NO. 121 As Tate delivers the ball.
What a superb position that is. You can't fault it.
In three slides Bradman himself appears. How he chooses to place himself within the sweep of the game's history is illuminating. First comes the most famous duck ever made — Bradman's final Test innings — presented with breathtakingly brief understatement:
SLIDE NO. 79 Perhaps it is only fair to also show you my last match on English soil. Bowled Hollies for 0, at The Oval, 1948.
Next, an equally catastrophic zero during his first appearance of the Bodyline series:
SLIDE NO. 79A Another unfortunate memory. Bowled by Bowes first ball on the Melbourne Cricket Ground 1932/3.
Often self-deprecating, history's greatest batsman publicly masked a healthy ego in the hope of thwarting the jealousy to which he was subjected throughout his life. He does, however, permit himself this one moment to savour near the end of the presentation. It follows the Wally Hammond photo previously mentioned and another of Keith Miller driving aggressively. Bradman is playing his iconic cover drive during his 452 not out against Queensland on the Sydney Cricket Ground:
SLIDE NO. 132 And one of myself executing a drive — taken about 1930. It contains perhaps a shade more vigour than the others but in those days I had it to spare.
The Bradman Museum collects material in many forms. Yet it is perhaps within our growing photographic collections that the game speaks most clearly to visitors. Bradman used photos to subtly thread together notions of ambition, controversy, celebration, failure, achievement. He understood the power of the image in telling the story of cricket.
SIR DONALD BRADMAN
DON BRADMAN SPENT THE FIRST 40 YEARS OF HIS LIFE making certain of his immortality and much of the rest of his life trying to live with the uniqueness of his mortality.
He was a genius batsman, adjudged by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack to be the twentieth century's greatest cricketer. Each of the 100 experts assembled from around the globe to determine the five cricketers of that century voted for him: another perfect score for an indomitable figure who strove for perfection. Runner-up Sir Garfield Sobers polled 90 votes, Sir Jack Hobbs 30, Shane Warne 27 and Sir Vivian Richards 25.
Cricket is an ancient game with a rich culture and a fantastic and fabled fascination for numbers. The one statistic burnt into the psyche of the game's followers everywhere is 99.94, Bradman's Test average. That he was one scoring shot away from an average of 100 and so nirvana will always beggar belief.
England's incomparable cricketer of the Victorian age, W.G. Grace, is the only other truly immortal servant of the game. The centenary of his death at 67 will be marked in October 2015. Bradman's legend, similarly, has intensified rather than diminished since his death at 92 in 2001.
So phenomenal was his scoring that the magnitude of the numbers tends to render him a one-dimensional figure. There is amazement, even awe, but no warmth in hard statistics. In his acclaimed 1946 work Between Wickets, celebrated cricket writer Ray Robinson drew attention to the dangers of seeing Bradman 'embalmed with decimal points'. He argued the maestro had been 'over-simplified to the public', had not been done full justice.
Bradman made his own emphatic observation about the relevance of statistics in Farewell to Cricket, one of his five books on the game. 'Figures are not entirely conclusive, especially short-term figures, but it is difficult to avoid their significance if a man produces them year after year against every type of opponent and under all conceivable conditions.'
He was more than a peerless cricket player. He was an insightful and intuitive captain and tactician, a canny selector, an astute and progressive administrator, and an expansive thinker, writer and correspondent on the game. He boasted a vast knowledge of cricket law and lore and in many respects was as powerful, persuasive and influential a figure off the ground as on it.
But it was as a batsman that he attained celebrity if not cult status wherever the game of Empire was played. His pomp was the 1930s, when the world was racked with political and economic chaos, Bradman offering his devotees distraction, inspiration, even perfection, in an imperfect world. His exploits as a cricket person transcended all boundaries. From the moment he toured England as a 21-year-old prodigy in 1930 he became a giant figure of Australian history.
CHAPTER 2PART 2
THE BRUCE POSTLE COLLECTION
A New Beginning
Don Bradman's retirement as cricket's pre-eminent batsman did nothing to diminish his aura or influence. After all, he had never confined his interest in the game to the techniques and practicalities of playing it. He was a fervent student of cricket history, who from the moment he was appointed secretary of Bowral Town Cricket Club a week after his seventeenth birthday had been fascinated by the mechanics and politics of administering the game. Bradman imposed his will as an administrator and legislator with the same sense of certainty and infallibility that characterised his batting.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Bradman Museum's: World of Cricket by Mike Coward, Philip Brown. Copyright © 2015 Mike Coward and the Bradman Museum. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Cover,Title,
Foreword by John Benaud,
Introduction,
PART 1 Donald Bradman's Slide Collection,
Sliding Through History by David Wells, oam, Curator, Bradman Museum,
Sir Donald Bradman,
The Slides,
PART 2 The Bruce Postle Collection,
A New Beginning,
Bruce Postle,
The Photos,
PART 3 The Vivian Jenkins Collection,
Eyewitness to Revolution,
Vivian Jenkins,
The Photos,
PART 4 The Philip Brown Collection,
Consequences of Revolution,
Philip Brown,
The Photos,
Acknowledgements,