Bradman as great without those four runs

Memonics

I am not sure whether the latest story buzzing in the cricket world about four missing runs that have been traced to Sir Donald Bradman’s account which raises his career Test average to a perfect hundred is true or a figment of the researcher’s imagination to ‘cash’ in on the great man’s birth centenary. More likely the latter, but it reveals the obsession with his stupendous batting exploits nonetheless.

No other player in the history of the game is so completely identified with a mere statistic. When you think of Bradman, wherever and whenever he is discussed, his batting average pops up as a reminder of his genius. For almost 60 years, this statistic has been the frame of reference in which batsmen before — and after — him have been assessed and rated, often with dire consequences.

There have been many ‘second Bradmans’ who have come to grief because of the comparison. If it was not the lack of genius, it was the pressure of expectations, which helps highlight how brilliantly Bradman himself coped. It reflects not just his cricketing ability, but also his mental strength.

Bradman’s utter domination of bowlers and phenomenal run-getting first awakened the entire cricketing world and then put it into a stupor. It seemed inconceivable that any man could wield a mere piece of willow with such dexterity and such ruthlessness.
Without exaggeration, he was indeed a run machine.

From the time he made his debut at 20 till he retired at 40, Bradman’s unparalleled skills and consistency made him not just the cynosure of all eyes (grounds filled and emptied with his arrival and departure) and a perennial headline grabber (he got front page banner headlines even when he failed), but also a metaphor for a myriad other things.

His extraordinary feats lifted Australia out of the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s. In Bradman, his countrymen sought psychological relief from their economic despair, as well as a statement of national identity, especially vis-à-vis mother country England. The latter earned its own backlash though Bodyline, a psychological terror tactic (albeit in sports) to not only stop Bradman from scoring runs, but also put a young nation in its place, keep the colonial flag flying.

It must now seem a travesty of justice that Bradman was dismissed for a blob in his final innings, missing out on an average of 100 by just four runs. But frankly, these four runs neither enhance nor diminish his stature a whit. Good god, even 99.94 boggles the mind and is unlikely to be surpassed in this millennium at least, in spite of the terrific bats and smaller boundaries that modern batsmen can benefit from.

What his failure to make those crucial four runs does, however, is provides a ‘human’ dimension to Bradman. It makes him altogether that much more mortal. And just that wee bit easier to relate to.