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Don Bradman: The knocks he played on his birthday

Don Bradman generally spent his birthdays away from the willow, sparing battered and bruised leather. There is not too much cricket played in August in Australia, after all. However, during the four England tours he did play thrice on his birthday.

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Don Bradman (right) walking out to toss with Sussex captain Alan Melville on his 26th birthday © Getty Images
Don Bradman (right) walking out to toss with Sussex captain Alan Melville on his 26th birthday © Getty Images

Don Bradman, born August 27, 1908, generally spent his birthdays away from the willow, sparing battered and bruised leather. There is not too much cricket played in August in Australia, after all. However, during the four England tours he did play thrice on his birthday. Arunabha Sengupta recalls the first such occasion while touching upon the other birthday innings as well. 

Uneventful birthdays

Late August, 1908. When a son was born to George and Emily Bradman in a small town called Cootamundra on the South West Slopes region of New South Wales, things were rather lukewarm in the cricket world.

The county championship was chugging along, but the greatest propelling engine had just pulled into its terminal station. On April 22 that year, at The Oval, WG Grace had ended his 44-year First-class career, scoring 15 and 25 for the Gentlemen of England versus Surrey.

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On the day young Donald George Bradman saw the light of the day, a handful of tours were going on but hardly worth anything more than obscure footnotes in the record books. Nottinghamshire were visiting Scotland, a motley side from Philadelphia were playing some matches in England, the Federated Malaya States were engaged in some quaint contests in the Straits Settlements.

And as was normal, cricket was still absent from the grounds of the southern land of Australia. The season would not take off for another month or so. Like the mountain-pygmy possum, the local marsupial, the noble game was going through the annual period of hibernation.

So would be spent many of the birthdays of the greatest of batsmen. Runs would rattle off his bat as if from the most perpetual production line. However, Bradman would generally enjoy a quiet day at home away from the grounds. August was not a month of cricket for the Australians. Bradman, the most private of individuals, enjoyed it that way.

Birth of a legend

Things, however, changed during that seminal year of 1930. A 21-year-old Bradman, fresh from his world record unbeaten 452 against Queensland, boarded the Orford to travel to the other side of the world.

As he crossed the equator into the other hemisphere, he left the space-time of cricketing lull and stepped into the bustle of English summer. The reverberations of his deeds soon drowned the sweet sound of the bat striking the ball. The next few months saw a spate of run-making that rewrote history and encroached fantasy.

He started with 236 at Worcester. The next innings, at Leicester, saw him blaze through an unbeaten 185. And he continued in the same vein.

By the time it was time for his 22nd birthday, he had dazzled the onlookers and dazed the bowlers, providing a visual and statistical spectacle that left every soul in England spellbound, and the scorers and scribes exhausted.

His run of scores in the Tests were 8, 131, 254, 1, 334, 14, 232. That meant 974 at an average of 139.14. No one has come close to breaking that record till this day.

As he walked out to bat in the gorgeous sunshine of Canterbury against Kent, for the first time in any sort of cricket match on his birthday, Bradman already had 2,578 runs under his belt that summer. At more than 95 runs per innings.

However, the first innings as birthday boy was not that successful. Bradman walked in at 39 for 1, with Tich Freeman on fire with his leg-breaks and top-spinners.

From the morning, congratulatory messages had streamed in for the hero of the moment. Even as Bradman took guard, the game was held up with a Post Office messenger running into the St Lawrence ground with a telegram for the batsman.

But the leg-spin of Freeman was not as amicable as the missives. The Kent great was also enjoying one of his best seasons, with 252 wickets that summer, exactly 100 ahead of Cec Parker. Bradman was troubled more than once. He survived 32 minutes, but then a leg-break deceived him and struck his pads. A loud appeal split the air, and the finger of ‘Sailor’ Young went up. Bradman had scored just 18, but walked back to vociferous cheers. People knew it was his birthday.

Australia succumbed to 181 all out and by the end of the day Kent had managed 87 for 4 against the combined threat of Tim Wall and Clarrie Grimmett. And thus ended Bradman’s first outing in the field as the birthday boy.

But then, he was Bradman. With Kent taking a 46-run first innings lead, the young man was back in the middle with the score on 18 for 1 just before tea on the second day. Freeman was on, and Bradman was struck on the pads very early, and managed to survive a desperately close decision. And then it was time for the master to demonstrate his enormous appetite for huge scores.

He drove and pulled Freeman again and again to get to 50 in just 59 minutes. By the end of the day he had reached 68. In the scorching heat of the following day, he batted unusually slowly, taking one and a half hoursto get the remaining 32 runs for his 100. He spent 25 minutes in the 90s.

And then, in the next one and a half hours, he proceeded to race along and score another hundred. Bill Woodfull declared after the double-century, with Bradman on 205. It was the phenomenon’s sixth double-hundred of the season, a world record. In 1900 KS Ranjitsinhji had scored 5.

The match ended in a draw with Frank Woolley delighting the crowd in Kent’s second innings with a quick unbeaten 60.

The other birthdays

The next time Bradman played cricket on his birthday was two years later, and not really a very serious variety of the game.

Arthur Mailey’s touring Australian team were having a grand time in North America. It was at Westwood that Bradman, the star of the show, celebrated his 24th birthday, playing in the University Ground. The match was against a Hollywood XVIII that included Boris Karloff among others.

The Don picked up the last wicket as the men from the silver screen struggled against Stan McCabe and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith. With just 122 runs scored by the hosts, Bradman batted late, and quite a bit after the runs were chased down by Vic Richardson and McCabe. As Australia batted on after going past the target, he remained unbeaten on 18.

The next time Bradman made an appearance on his birthday was during the following tour of England in 1934.

Australia played Sussex at Hove, and Bradman, leading the side in the absence of Woodfull, was plagued with an injured thumb. He did go out to bat after tea on his birthday, the second day of the match. But, he had dropped himself to No. 7, and the score as he walked in the score read 436 for 5. Having scored 18, he was bowled off an edge attempting to cut George Pearce.

With the 1938 tour ending before August 27, the next and final time Bradman played on his birthday was in his final trip to England. That was the great triumphant tour of 1948. The Australians took on the Gentlemen of England at Lord’s in a three-day encounter starting August 25.

The Test series had been won and only three matches remained to be played. But Bradman, famously and infamously, was in no mood to show any sign of letting up. It bears testimony to the man’s incredible resolution that in the final three innings of the tour he notched up big hundreds.

Bradman was not able to bat on his birthday. Australia batted first, on August 25, and made 610 for 5. The Gentlemen were not good enough to make them bat again.

The great man walked out on the first morning with the score on 40 for 1. Methodically and with assurance he got to 18, thus crossing 2,000 for the tour. He reached 50 just after lunch and 100 an hour and a quarter after that. When he threw his wicket away, skying Freddie Brown to mid-on, he had scored exactly 150. His final knock at Lord’s had produced one of his best innings on that hallowed turf.

On the second day at Lord’s, after lunch, Bradman was presented with a special birthday cake, bearing kangaroos and other adornments. It was prepared by the old MCC catering maestro George Portman, who had been at Lord’s for 46 years.

The cake was a gift from all at Lord’s and weighed 60 lbs, and resembled a book of about 18 inches square. The icing was in the form of the yellow and red ribbons of MCC. There was also a photograph of the maestro in the cake-book. Some said that it symbolised Bradman’s career, which had been a ‘piece of cake’.

The other gifts included Sir Pelham Warner’s new book on Lord’s. He was also toasted with champagne, but The Don, as usual, did not indulge in alcohol. The crowd gathered in front of the pavilion and sang Happy Birthday to You and Auld Lang Syne. Bradman appeared on the balcony of the Australian pavilion and waved. The celebrations were one day in advance, but it was an emotional Don that left the Grace Gates that day.

So, how much did Bradman score in First-Class matches that were played on his birthday?

It turns out that he did not get too many on his birthday. But in the matches that involved the special day he managed 392 runs in 4 innings, with one not out. An average of 132.66.

Sigh … No matter where you slice him or his cake, Bradman will remain Bradman.

Brief Scores:

Australia vs Kent, 1930

Australians 181 (Tich Freeman 5 for 78) and 320 for 3 decl. (Don Bradman 205*, Archie Jackson 50*) drew with Kent 227 (Tim Wall 5 for 60) and 83 for 2 (Frank Woolley 60*).

Australia vs Sussex, 1934

Sussex 304 for 8 decl. (Jim Parks 60, Tom Cook 60, James Langridge 57; Chuck Fleetwood-Smith 5 for 114) and 221 (Edward Bowley 63, John Langridge 53; Chuck Fleetwood-Smith 5 for 87) lost to Australians 560 (Alan Kippax 250, Len Darling 117, Bill Brown 66) by an innings and 35 runs.

Australia vs Gentlemen of England, 1948

Australians 610 for 5 decl. (Lindsay Hassett 200*, Don Bradman 150, Bill Brown 120, Keith Miller 69) beat Gentlemen of England 246 (RT Simpson 60) and 284 (Bill Edrich 128; Doug Ring 5 for 70) by an innings and 81 runs.

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history of cricket, with occasional statistical pieces and reflections on the modern game. He is also the author of four novels, the most recent being Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of The Ashes. He tweets here.)

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