Don Bradman

Don Bradman (born August 27, 1908, Cootamundra, New South Wales, Australia—died February 25, 2001, Adelaide, South Australia) was an Australian cricketer widely regarded as the greatest player of the 20th century. One of the greatest run scorers in the history of the game, he had a Test batting average of 99.94, which remains unsurpassed as of September 2025. During his 20‑year playing career, he set numerous batting records and became a national sporting icon. Bradman’s prolific success as a batter led to the England cricket team devising “bodyline,” a controversial leg-side bowling tactic, to limit his scoring. He captained Australia’s 1948 team—later dubbed “The Invincibles” by the Australian press and fans—on an unbeaten tour of England. After retiring, he continued to work as an administrator, national team selector, expert columnist, and author.

Early life and career

Bradman was the youngest of five children of George Bradman and his wife, Emily Bradman (née Whatman). He had one older brother, Victor, and three older sisters, Islet, Lilian, and Elizabeth May. His family moved to Bowral in early 1911, where his father worked as a carpenter. His family was deeply involved with cricket: His maternal uncles Richard and George Whatman captained local clubs and encouraged him to take up the game, and his mother regularly bowled to him after school and had herself played in women’s intercolonial competitions in the 1890s. As a youth, Bradman practiced developing his timing, skills, and reflexes by hitting a golf ball against a water tank.

He attended Bowral elementary and intermediate high schools. His first competitive innings was for his primary school, where, at age 11, he made 55 not out. The following season, for Bowral High School, he struck his first century (scoring 100 runs or more in one innings), making 115 not out against Mittagong Public School. He also began acting as scorer for the Bowral town XI (local cricket team) during the 1920–21 season, which often included his father and two uncles. On one occasion, when the side was short a player, Bradman was sent in to bat and made 37 not out. As a teenager, he played tennis and rugby and took part in track-and-field events for his school. In 1922 he passed his intermediate-level exams and began working as a clerk in a real estate office. He became a regular member of the Bowral town team during the 1925–26 season, scoring more than 1,000 runs in 23 innings. In October 1926 he was invited to practice with the New South Wales state squad in Sydney and made his first‑class domestic cricket debut the following season. He was selected as part of the national team for England’s 1928 tour of Australia and made his debut during the first Test match of the series in Brisbane.

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International career

During a 20-year career between 1928 and 1948, Bradman played 52 Tests for Australia, amassed 6,996 runs, and had a batting average of 99.94. He scored 29 international Test centuries, of which 12 were double centuries (scoring 200 runs or more in a single innings). As of September 2025 Bradman holds the record for most double centuries scored in Tests. On his first visit to England in 1930, he established a Test record (eventually broken) by scoring 334 runs in one innings, his first triple century. He scored 974 runs in the five-match series (a record that stands as of September 2025). In 1934, also in England, he notched his second career triple century, scoring 304 runs. Bradman’s sustained stellar performances gained him massive adulation among Australian fans. Amid the economic hardship of the Great Depression, he provided Australians with a rare source of pride and diversion.

However, his fame and his appointment to the national team selection panel in 1934 contributed to a divide forming between him and some of his fellow teammates, who were uncomfortable with Bradman’s involvement in picking the Australian Test squad. As a socially reserved teetotaler who was younger than most of his teammates at the time, Bradman seldom fraternized with them off the field, which some read as aloofness and further alienated him from them. The first break occurred after the 1930 England tour, when Bradman’s employers, the Sydney sporting goods firm of Mick Simmons, arranged for him to complete the final leg of the return trip from Perth to Sydney by rail and air for a solo press tour ahead of his teammates, who continued their journey by ship. The situation deteriorated over the next few years, and by the time Bradman became Test captain in 1936, the rift had deepened to the point that some members of the Australian team faced a disciplinary hearing, allegedly for failing to fully support him.

During the 1932–33 tour of Australia, England employed a controversial “bodyline” bowling tactic (a method of sustained short-pitched bowling to a packed leg-side field, devised to limit Bradman’s scoring) and won the Ashes (trophy awarded to the winner of the biennial Australia-England Test series). Bodyline bowling caused multiple serious injuries among the Australian team, and the Australian players, administration, and media collectively condemned it as unsportsmanlike and dangerous. The tactic was banned soon after the series, but it created bitterness on the part of Australia for some time to come. During the 1934 tour of England, Bradman scored 304 and 244 in the fourth and fifth Tests of the series to help Australia win back the Ashes. After the series he suffered an acute appendicitis attack and underwent emergency surgery in London on the eve of the team’s return to Australia.

Bradman was named captain of the Australian team for the 1936–37 Ashes and led the national side until he retired from international cricket in 1948. During his first series as captain, the Australian team lost the first two matches. During the third Test, heavy rain made playing conditions challenging for the players. Bradman made a tactical decision to reverse his team’s batting order for Australia’s second innings and sent his specialist bowlers in to bat first in order to protect his main batters until conditions improved. Batting seventh in the lineup, Bradman scored 270 runs to help Australia win the match. In 2001 the cricket magazine Wisden rated this particular performance as one of the 10 best Test innings in cricket history.

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Test cricket was suspended during World War II, and Bradman enrolled in the Royal Australian Air Force Reserve in June 1940. He was later transferred to the army and commissioned as a lieutenant in the Citizen Military Forces in October the same year. From January 1941 he served full-time as a physical and recreational training officer before being invalided out in April 1941 owing to defective eyesight and fibrositis (a medical disorder now called fibromyalgia, characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain). The South Australia Cricket Association (SACA) chose Bradman as its representative to the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket (now Cricket Australia, the country’s governing body for the sport) in August 1945. In 1948 he was captain of the Australian team, nicknamed “The Invincibles,” that retained the Ashes by a margin of 4–0 and remained unbeaten throughout the 34-match tour of England. In the final Test of the tour, Bradman needed to score 4 runs to take his career average past 100. He was famously dismissed for a duck (without scoring a run) in his last career innings. He retired from first-class cricket in 1949.

After retirement

After retiring, Bradman became a central figure in Australian cricket administration and selection. Apart from short gaps in 1953 and 1956–57 when he traveled with the Australian cricket team during its tours to England and wrote articles and columns for various newspapers, he served on Australia’s governing cricket board until 1980, twice as chair (1960–63 and 1969–72). He was also president of the SACA (1965–73) and continued acting as a national selector (1934, 1936–52, and 1954–71). He was chosen as a life member of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1958 and served on the body’s Select Committee on Throwing in 1959. Bradman also wrote a memoir, Farewell to Cricket (1950), and a coaching manual, The Art of Cricket (1958).