Background

Ethnicity: Don Bradman had English heritage both on maternal and paternal sides. His grandfather Charles Andrew Bradman came from Withersfield, Suffolk. One of his great-grandfathers, an Italian, relocated to Australia in 1826.

Don Bradman was born on August 27, 1908, in Cootamundra, New South Wales, Australia. He was the youngest child of George Bradman, a farmer and carpenter, and his wife Emily Lilian Bradman. Bradman had a brother, Victor, and three sisters, Islet Nathalie, Lilian May, and Elizabeth May.

Education

Don Bradman was raised in an agricultural family. When he was about two-and-a-half years old, his parents relocated from his native Cootamundra to Bowral, a small town in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, seeking for better climate and soil.

Bradman developed passion for cricket at an early age. A quiet child with few friends, he often entertained himself hitting a golf ball against a water tank, using a cricket stump for a bat. That helped him to develop a quick eye, deft footwork, and an uncanny judgment of bowling. Later, Bradman was given a cricket stump by his father, a battered and repaired hand-me-down. The brand-new bat was promised to him after he would score more than 100 in an important game. He soon received three bats instead, having scored 300.

Bradman played cricket for his Bowral High School team. After leaving the institution at the age of fourteen, he continued to play in local cricket teams.

Career

The career of Don Bradman began from a service for a real estate agent in Bowral. Simultaneously, Bradman continued to play in local cricket teams. The employer didn't hinder Bradman's passion and gave him time off when necessary. Bradman left cricket for two years and played tennis but came back to the favorite distraction of his childhood by 1925-1926.

Demonstrating quite huge scores, he was noticed by scouts for the New South Wales team. In 1927, Bradman was invited to play in trial games by the New South Wales Cricket Association. The first match with the team ended for him with the score of 118, the first of Bradman's 117 first-class centuries.

In the 1926-27 season, Don Bradman also played grade cricket for St George club in Sydney. After a series of big scores at the beginning of the next season, he was invited to join Australian team in a Test match at Brisbane against English team headed by Percy Chapman. Bradman performed poorly in the first test and dropped to 12th man for the second. However, he scored 79 and 112 in the third Test at Melbourne that established his place in the Australian team. In 1929, the player scored an average of 139.14, and was widely praised as a hero of the sport.

The succession of illnesses in the early 1930s, culminating in appendicitis and peritonitis, withdrew him from the game for some time. In 1935, he moved with his wife to Adelaide where he first worked as a stockbroker. However, Bradman's popularity soon led him to be assigned a captain of the South Australia team, with the Kensington club, and then, in 1936-1937, a captain of the Australian team for the Test series against English team of Gubby Allen. Although Australian side ultimately won the series, the competition was marred by various rifts between factions on the team, and by the fact that players' wives could not accompany them to competition. In the final test of the next season, Bradman broke his ankle, and spent the rest of the series out of play.

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Don Bradman volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force but was entrusted to teach physical education in the Army instead. Two years later, he was discharged from service by the authorities because of various injuries. He returned to the service at the stockbroker's firm which went bankrupt in 1945. Bradman's employer was arrested for fraud, and the cricketer established his own company and succeeded.

Bradman came back to cricket for the first postwar tour in 1946-1947 and led Australia to victory as the captain of the team. Bradman was the most successful captain. In the 24 tests during his captainship Australia won 15, lost three, and drew six. The team which toured England in 1948, Bradman's final year of play, never lost a game.

Don Bradman remained in stockbroking until the middle of the 1950s when he was forced to sell the business because of poor health. He then kept the contact with the Australian cricket on the administrative level serving as a Test selector. He chaired the Australian Cricket Board from 1960 to 1963 and from 1969 to 1972. The most important decision that he made in the post was the cancel of the visit of a South African team in 1971-1972 because of the expected bitterness and violence associated with opposition to South Africa's apartheid politics. From 1965 to 1973, Bradman presided the South Australian Cricket Association.

Bradman also tried himself as a writer for three decades after his retirement. A 1950 volume of reminiscences, Farewell to Cricket, and a 1958 coaching manual, The Art of Cricket, were followed by The Bradman Albums, a book released in 1988.

Achievements

• 

  Don Bradman's career Test batting average of 99.94 scored over the course of his 20-year career is often cited as the greatest achievement by any sportsman in any major sport. His record of 974 runs in a series is the most by any player in Test history and it still stands today.
  
  He was knighted in 1949 in recognition of his services to cricket, becoming the only Australian cricketer to receive such honor before retirement. In 1979, Bradman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.
  
  The London Times reporter once wrote summing up Bradman's popularity that the player was so admired by Australians that "for most of the second half of the [twentieth] century, he would have been the people's choice as President of Australia." Australian Prime Minister John Howard in his turn called him the "greatest living Australian" in 1997. Three years later, Don Bradman was unanimously voted the greatest cricketer of the 20th century by the 100 judges of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.
  
  The image of Bradman has decorated many postage stamps and coins, including a $5 commemorative gold coin issued by the Royal Australian Mint on the centenary of his birth. The Bradman Birthplace Museum was opened in Cootamundra while he was still alive.
  
  Nowadays, Don Bradman, a national icon, continues to inspire young cricketers all over the world.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Art of Cricket

    (An illustrated coaching manual by Don Bradman.)

    1958
  • Farewell to Cricket

    (A volume of reminiscences by Don Bradman.)

    1950
  • My Cricketing Life

    (The second book issued by Don Bradman.)

    1938
  • Don Bradman's Book

    (The first book written by Bradman.)

    1930

Views

Quotations: "The game of cricket existed long before I was born. It will be played centuries after my demise. During my career, I was privileged to give the public my interpretation of its character in the same way that a pianist might interpret the works of Beethoven."

"I set great store in certain qualities which I believe to be essential in addition to skill. They are that the person conducts his or her life with dignity, with integrity, courage, and perhaps most of all, with modesty."

"I was never coached; I was never told how to hold a bat. Every ball went exactly where I wanted it to go until the ball that got me out."

"A good captain must be a fighter; confident but not arrogant, firm but not obstinate; able to take criticism without letting it unduly disturb him, for he is sure to get it – and unfairly, too."

"Reading poetry and watching cricket were the sum of my world, and the two are not so far apart as many aesthetes might believe."

Personality

According to his contemporaries, Don Bradman was a self-motivated man with a very strong character. He was a person averse to close personal relationships.

Physical Characteristics: A slightly-built, Don Bradman was five feet seven inches tall.

Quotes from others about the person

• Mark Taylor, former Australian cricketer: "His innings may have closed, but his legacy will forever live on in the hearts of millions of Australians."
  
  Fred Trueman, English cricketer, author and TV broadcaster: "He was simply the best […] I would love to have had the great honour of bowling against him."
  
  David Graveney, English cricketer and former chairman of the England Test selectors: "The word icon is perhaps used too often, but it does apply to him."
  
  Brian Close, English cricketer: "He gave Australia a lot to live for and I doubt he will ever be surpassed."

Interests

• reading poetry

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis, golf, squash

Connections

Don Bradman first met his wife-to-be, Jessie Martha Menzies, when he was 12 years old. The wedding ceremony took place at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Burwood, Sydney, on April 30, 1932.

It was a perfect marriage that lasted for 65 years. Jessie and Don were very attached to each other and always supported each other in the hardest situations. Among such situations were the health problems of their children which made their upbringing a challenge. Their first-born, Ross, didn't survive his infancy, their son John had polio, and their daughter Shirley was affected by cerebral palsy from birth.

The death of Jessie in 1997 was a great tragedy for Don Bradman.

Father:

George Bradman

(born November 29, 1875 – died April 18, 1961)

Mother:

Emily Lilian Bradman

(née Whatman; born September 4, 1871 – died December 16, 1944)

Son:

John Russell Bradsen

(born July 10, 1939 – died 2001)

late spouse:

Jessie Martha Bradman

(née Menzies; born June 11, 1909 – died September 14, 1997)

Daughter:

Shirley Jane Bradman

(born 1941)

Sister:

Islet Nathalie Bradman

(born 1892 – died August 3, 1977)

Sister:

Lilian May Bradman

(born 1899 – died about 1994)

Sister:

Elizabeth May Bradman

(born 1901 – died 1993)

Brother:

Victor Charles Bradman

(born 1904 – died 1959)

Friend:

Rohan Rivett

(born January 16, 1917 – died October 5, 1977)

Rivett was an Australian journalist and author. He served as an editor of the Adelaide newspaper The News from 1951 to 1960. He is best known for accounts of his experiences on the Burma Railway and his active involvment in the Max Stuart case.

References

• Sir Donald George Bradman: The Don A book by Dhirubhai Patel.
  2016
• Bradman: What they Said about Him A book by Barry Morris.
  1994
• Using the Private Possessions of Sir Donald Bradman A biography by Michael Page.
  1990
• Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth The book explains how Sir Donald Bradman's iconic status was created and sustained.
  2002
• Private Don: The Man Behind the Legend of Don Bradman Through the window of never before seen letters, Christine Wallace reveals the private Don Bradman – troubled father, loyal friend and outspoken critic.
  2007
• Don Bradman A book by Kalyani Mookherji.
  2017
• Bradman & the Summer that Changed Cricket This fascinating book reconstructs the legendary Australian tour from the first day to the last, in the most lively detail, including every run in Bradman's legendary 300 scored in one day during the Leeds Test.
  2009