Bradman’s bat fetches record $145,000

A spokeswoman for Melbourne’s Leski Auctions said bat would remain on home soil after being bought by a private vendor.

“This is a record price for a cricket bat and there were several bidders, all of them within Australia, hoping to win the auction,” she said.

Despite being in the hands of Australia’s greatest-ever cricketer, the bat did not see much action in the first Test in Brisbane in 1928-29, as the “Don” scored just 18 and 1 in Australia’s 675-run thrashing by England.

Bradman was dropped after his inauspicious debut. Later he donated the bat to a competition run by ‘The Sun’ newspaper in Sydney to help raise money to endow a Don Bradman Cot for the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children.