Don Bradman...simply the best ever

[ghost]

Over the past couple of months, I have posted topics on Bill Ponsford, Stan McCabe, Sid Barnes and Lindsay Hassett.

On this very sad day I will post about the greatest of them all...Don Bradman.

It makes no sense to call him a great player. Allan Border was a great player. Legend is the wrong word too. Victor Trumper is a legend. Phar Lap and Ned Kelly are legends. Legends have a flaw in their character. Unlike Phar Lap and Ned Kelly who died leaving us wondering what if, Bradman left us with nothing to wonder about.

Bradman was something which nothing greater can be conceived.

Take Bradman out of cricket and it is a game in which no Test player can average more than 65. Bradman averaged 99.94.

Pollock, Sobers, Harvey, the Chappells...invincible on their day, but not over 20 years like Bradman.

First Class Career: 234 matches; 28067 runs, 95.14 average, 69 50's, 117 100's, 36 wickets.

Test Career: 52 matches, 6996 runs, 99.94 average, 13 50's, 29 100's, 2 wickets.

It is his scores of 200 and over that tell the tale of his supreme mastery in first class games. They are: 452no, 469, 357, 340 no, 334, 304, 225, 254, 232, 252no, 236, 205no, 223, 258, 220, 299no, 226, 219, 238, 200, 253, 244, 206, 233, 270, 212, 212, 278, 258, and 202.

 

[John Howard]

Well, it is a moment in the history of our country. No Australian has gathered greater respect, greater reverence and has had a greater impact on this country than Don Bradman. He was not only the greatest cricketer the world has seen, by the measurement of many the most skilled sportsman the world has seen.
But more than that he gave Australians hope and confidence in a time of great despondency and despair during the years of the depression when his prowess on the cricket field injected new spirit into people who needed something to lift their lives. And the fact that it’s now 52 years since he last played and we still talk of him in this extraordinary way is a measure of the impact he’s had on the life of the country. I spoke to his son earlier this morning and expressed the sympathy of the entire nation to him and remarked what an incredible impact Don Bradman has had on the lives of so many Australians and the concept and the impression of Australia around the world. It’s fair to say that the name ‘Bradman’ is the best known Australian name still on the Indian subcontinent and that’s a measure.

When Nelson Mandela saw Malcolm Fraser after he’d been released from captivity he asked almost as his first question whether Don Bradman was still alive. That’s an indication of how the man touched everybody’s life.

 

[John Howard]

It is a moment in the life of the country like perhaps none other because of the extraordinary influence that he’s had. And the fact that he lived a very long life after he left the sport, he gave a lot back through administration and then he, of course, worked through the challenges of world series cricket, played a role in bringing about a healing of that rift and then just continued on as somebody occupying that very special and revered place. And it will certainly have an enormous impact on the cricketing world and there will be an opportunity because after a private funeral there will be a memorial service, a State memorial service almost certainly in Adelaide. That’s a matter to be worked out between the family and the Australian Cricket Board. That’s a matter for them. The Government will, of course, assist in any way which is sought and that will be an opportunity for the nation and the cricketing world to pay tribute to this man’s remarkable life and the remarkable place he’s had in the hearts and the feelings of the Australian people for so many generations.

 

[Visro]

Hear hear. Great post there ghost. Don Bradman was the greatest and will always be the greatest cricketer that ever lived. When my mates told me at school they said i looked like a stunned mullet which was exactly how i felt like.

RIP DON BRADMAN

Vis

------------------
I was put on this Earth to complete a certain number of tasks. I am so far behind, I will never die...

 

[Dodongo]

Is Don. Is Good.

------------------
DODONGO HAS SPOKEN

 

[kangas biggest fan]

when did he get 469?????????

 

[ant]

Must be a typo Kangas.

As for the Don, I reckon part of what made him a great Australian, apart from his deeds on the cricketing field, were the little things he did to help others. I heard many stories today, like the time he wrote a letter to the family of Kim Beazley when the Labor leader had polio as a child, or when the Don gave a person he had never met but who had been writing to him, his collection of books on economics. The man had told Sir Donald that he was going to study economics. He must have done a million little things like this over his life, which really give a perspective into the true kindness of the man away from his records and amazing cricketing deeds. He was a true gentleman who will definitely be missed.

 

[ghost]

Sorry Kangas biggest fan, a typo.