It will now be the late Sir Don Bradman

It will now be the late Sir Don Bradman
AGENCIES

SYDNEY, FEBRUARY 26: The sporting world mourned the passing of Sir Donald Bradman, regarded as the greatest cricketer ever, who died at his Adelaide home yesterday. He was 92 and had been suffering from pneumonia.

Tributes to Bradman poured in from all over, remembering a fine batsman, captain and sportsman. In Australia, they were mourning a national icon who gave hope to millions of countrymen during the Great Depression and World War II.

Bradman’s funeral, in keeping with his trademark modesty and abhorrence of publicity, will be private. His son John said the service and cremation in Adelaide would be followed several weeks later by a public memorial service in the same city.

The only thing extravagant about the famously shy man was his cricket and the praise he received for it. He was to the game what Pele is to football, Babe Ruth and Di Maggio to baseball, Michael Jordan to basketball: nonpareil, simply the best.

The statistics alone can speak: a Test average of 99.94, a career first-class average of 95.14, a quiver full of three-figure scores...But statistics tell only part of the story. They can’t explain the nascent terror in the mind of Douglas Jardine that forced him to change the accepted rules of a gentleman’s game. They can’t explain the frustration in the heart of every bowler who’s had the misfortune of seeing a near-perfect ball stroked elegantly and nonchalantly to the boundary.And they can’t explain the humbling feeling in the mightiest of cricketers, from Trueman to Tendulkar, when they came face to face with ‘The Don’.

If there was one blemish in his career, it was probably the last Test ball he faced. The gods, they say, guard jealously their monopoly of perfection. That’s probably why they gave Eric Hollies a power few others had at the time: The power to dismiss Don Bradman. In one of sport’s least plausible moments, Bradman was bowled, second ball, for a duck by the England spinner. He had needed just four more runs for a career Test average of 100.