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Genesis -- the making of a Don!

During the weekends, and after school, I usually found myself without any playmates because no boy lived close to our home. For this reason I had to improvise my own amusement, and this, during the hours of daylight, almost invariably centered around the use of a ball. It was either kicking a football, playing tennis against a garage door or an unusual form of cricket which I invented for my own enjoyment.

At the back of our home was an 800-gallon water tank set on a round brick stand. From the tank to the laundry door was a distance of about eight feet. The area under-foot was cemented and, with all doors shut, this portion was enclosed on three sides and roofed over so that I could play there on wet days. Armed with a small cricket stump (which I used as a bat) I would throw a golf ball at this brick stand and try to hit the ball on the rebound. The golf ball came back at great speed and to hit it at all with the round stump was no easy task.

To make my game interesting I would organize two sides consisting of well-known international names and would bat for Taylor, Gregory, Collins and so on, in turn.

The door behind me was the wicket, and I devised a system of ways to get caught out and of boundaries. Many a time I incurred mother’s displeasure because I just had to finish some important Test Match at the very moment she wanted me for a meal.

The open side of my playing area corresponded to the on-side of a cricket field, and therefore I did not have to chase the ball for any shots on the off-side.

This rather extraordinary and primitive idea was purely a matter of amusement, but looking back over the years I can understand how it must have developed the co-ordination of brain, eye and muscle which was to serve me so well in important matches later on.

Another form of amusement was to take a golf ball into the neighbouring paddock where I would stand some 10 or 15 yards from the dividing fence and throw the ball to hit a rounded rail. My main purpose was to make the ball come back at various heights and angles so that I could catch it.

Obviously this also developed the ability to throw accurately, because if I missed the selected spot, it would mean a walk to retrieve the ball.

The playground of the primary school was separated from that of the high school by a fence, but we had the privilege of standing at the gateway. I was frequently to be found at that gateway watching the senior boys play cricket, and once or twice at their invitation managed to have a few hits with them.

Even in the senior school playground, there was no cricket pitch, and our practice was carried out on dirt, which resembled Nottingham marl in appearance. Our wicket was the bell post. A chalk mark indicated the height of the stumps, and many an argument ensued as to whether the post had been struck above or below the chalk mark.

Bats mainly consisted of pieces of wood from a gum tree, fashioned after the shape of a baseball bat. Pads were never worn, and the ball as of a type commonly known as a 'compo'. A boy usually occupied the crease until he got out.

The first cricket match in which I played occurred when I was about eleven years of age. It was at Glebe Park, Bowral; not on a cricket ground but on the football field. The pitch was plain dirt, and was the most level piece of earth we could find.

Bad as it was, I don’t think that it equalled the Australian pitch which "W.G." (Grace) described thus: "There was so much dust on the pitch that the ball sometimes stopped where it was pitched by the bowler." (Ref: The Graces by Powell-Canynge Caple). They must have been slow lob bowlers.

Little did I dream that later a beautiful cricket ground would exist on the same recreational area bearing the name of The Bradman Oval.

In this first match of mine our captain won the toss and decided to bat. For the other side a left-hand bowler obtained a wicket with his first ball, another with his second ball, and I arrived at the crease, a none too confident lad, to stand between the bowler and a hat trick. How I survived the first ball remains a mystery, but I did, and eventually carried my bat for 55 runs.

In the High School there were occasional matches on sports afternoons between scratch teams, and there were only two occasions when I played for our school team against a neighbouring school. In the first of these two matches, against Mittagong School, we played on a concrete pitch covered with coir matting, and out of our team’s total of 156 runs my contribution was 115 not out. I was then twelve years of age, and that was my first century.

Naturally I was elated, but my pride was short-lived, for next day we were lined up in the playground at school and the headmaster said: "I understand that there is a certain boy among you who scored a century yesterday against Mittagong. Well, that is no reason or excuse why you should have left a bat behind." I was never guilty of a similar offence again.

In the second of these two matches, which we also won, my contribution was 72 not out, so that in competitive matches at school against outside teams I scored a total of 244 runs without losing my wicket.

Despite the lack of modern sporting facilities, these school days were completely happy. Apart from cricket, I thoroughly enjoyed all other sports, representing the school at tennis, playing for the school Rugby League Football team, and winning the 100 yards, 220 yards, quarter and half-mile races for boys of my age.

Sparse as it may seem, that constituted the background of my sporting education at school.

At weekends I often walked for miles on shooting expeditions, and loved fishing in the nearby creek.

Swimming was an exception. Two episodes nearly ended in tragedy. They were enough.

Mathematics was my favourite subject, though science ran a close second until an accident at the school (a student caused an explosion with an unauthorised experiment) made me apprehensive.

They were normal boyhood days.

Excerpted from Farewell to Cricket, an Autobiography, by Don Bradman, 1978, kind courtesy Rupa Paperbacks.