Bradman letters revealed: What Don really thought about Packer, Warne, the Queen and fame
Sir Donald Bradman feared a second Kerry Packer breakaway venture in the 1980s and did not blame Australian cricketers for taking big money to play in apartheid South Africa. He was no fan of Paul Keating, admired Queen Elizabeth II, and took some of his greatest pleasure late in life from watching Shane Warne in action.
These insights and many more are contained in a collection of more than 20 letters penned by Bradman to an English friend, the entertainer Peter Brough, and tucked away in the National Library of Australia.
Sir Donald Bradman wrote letters late in life almost as prolifically as he’d made runs in his younger years.Credit: Fairfax Media
Written between 1984 and 1998, the letters capture Bradman’s complicated relationship with fame and his often trenchant views on sport and politics at home and abroad.
Brough was an English entertainer, specialising in a ventriloquist act that was popular on radio during the 1950s in the UK. Bradman met Brough through his father Arthur during tours of England in the 1930s, and the younger men struck up a friendship that continued through correspondence over many years. Brough died in 1999, Bradman in 2001. The letters were donated to the NLA by Brough’s family.
‘The cricket world has been in a ferment’
In the winter of 1985, Bradman held grave concerns for the future of the game amid the loss of 14 top Australian players to “rebel” tours of South Africa. There were parallel revelations that Packer was signing up players himself to protect his investment in the game in Australia.
Former Australian captain Kim Hughes (left) at the Wanderers Ground in Johannesburg in 1985 while playing on a rebel tour of South Africa organised by Ali Bacher. Credit: AP
There was no Packer breakaway: the terms he had agreed with Bradman in 1979 were too generous for that. And it was economic sanctions, rather than the sporting kind, that brought a swift end to apartheid in the late 1980s. Bradman was buoyed by South Africa’s readmission.
‘Keating is a disaster’
Bradman’s conservative political views are no secret, and an affection for the UK and its monarchy remained strong right through his life. In May 1986, he was a guest of Queen Elizabeth II for lunch on the royal yacht Britannia during a tour of Australia.
There was admiration, too, for Britain’s long-serving prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who resigned from office in November 1990 after more than a decade in charge. Bradman contrasted democracy in Britain and Australia with the recent assassination of India’s former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, in May the following year.
The USSR collapsed later that same year, a moment Bradman marked with acclamation.
A couple of years later, Keating was re-elected as Australia’s prime minister, but in December 1993 the South Australian Labor government paid the price for the State Bank collapse.
Paul Keating’s reign as prime minister was not enjoyed by Sir Donald Bradman. Credit: Fairfax
The republic remained an issue for Bradman, especially when viewed through the lens of personal problems for so many members of the royal family in the 1990s.
The price of fame
In the 1980s and ’90s, Bradman’s profile rose as a much-venerated figure in Australia and around the world.
While appreciative of so much love, Bradman also felt constrained by the attention, and the demands it placed on his time and letter writing.
Gary Sweet as a defiant Bradman in Bodyline opposed to England paceman Harold Larwood and captain Douglas Jardine. Credit: Bodyline
The TV miniseries Bodyline was broadcast in 1985, starring Gary Sweet as Bradman. The man himself gave a mixed review.
The bicentenary of European settlement took Bradman and his wife Jessie to Sydney in early 1988, where a celebratory Test match was played.
A few months later, Bradman confessed to seeking refuge away from the spotlight: “I prefer to be far away from crowds and publicity. My 80th birthday is coming up in August and I have already arranged to go away from Adelaide for a week to dodge all the fuss.”
Attention ramped up further in 1996, when Bradman sat down with Ray Martin for a televised interview to raise funds for the Bradman Museum in Bowral. Around the same time, John Howard’s election as prime minister put an avowed “cricket tragic” in the Lodge, who often cited Bradman as a hero.
In 1998, Bradman confided further to Brough about the price of his fame. His beloved wife, Jessie, had died in September 1997.
On Warne
In the interview with Martin, Bradman spoke of how the best cricket anyone could possibly watch was that of an aggressive batsman versus an over-the-wrist leg-spinner. By May 1991, it had been nearly 30 years since the retirement of Richie Benaud, and Bradman despaired of seeing another wrist-spinner of top quality.
“The great tragedy of modern cricket is the demise of the slow leg-spinner,” he wrote. “Primarily it seems to be due to the one-day games in which ‘economy’ is the only thing that matters.
Shane Warne in full flight.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
“You don’t have to get the other fellow out, you only have to stop him scoring runs, and of course young leg-spinners when learning their trade, are always a bit expensive.”
Shane Warne was by that time making his start in first-class cricket, and made his debut for Australia in January 1992. In early 1993, Bradman had started to pay attention.
That prediction proved prescient. England’s troubles in the late 1980s and early 1990s are another theme of Bradman’s letters, but in this case they are balanced by what he was seeing from Warne.
“Poor old England is in a bad way – rather than sack [captain Graham] Gooch I think they should have sacked the selectors,” he wrote during the 1993 Ashes series. “There must be better players in the county ranks than some of those selected.
“Still it must be lauded that our fellows have played well and I have been excited to see a young leg-spinner turning the ball more than anyone since [Chuck] Fleetwood-Smith. And he has been economical as well. Time we got away from the endless stream of fast bowlers.”
Shane Warne set the 1993 Ashes series alight.Credit: Reuters
Eighteen months later, Bradman was ready to afford Warne the highest possible praise, though he was still just 25 years old and had more than a decade of Test cricket ahead of him.
“Shane Warne is bowling brilliantly and causing all sorts of trouble,” he wrote in November 1994. “Excepting [Bill] O’Reilly, Warne is the best slow leg-spinner we’ve produced, better even than [Clarrie] Grimmett and that is very high praise.”
An eye for talent
Bradman’s eye was always open for the admiration of great players, but it was his assessments of young, promising cricketers that stand out most.
In the summer of 1985-86, he picked out arguably the two finest Australian cricketers to debut in an otherwise grim season: lithe left-armer Bruce Reid and a young all-rounder called Steve Waugh. He also supported the decision to install Tim Zoehrer as Australian wicketkeeper ahead of Wayne Phillips.
Paceman Bruce Reid and all-rounder Steve Waugh caught Bradman’s eye.
By November 1989, Australia’s cricket fortunes were on the upswing, and as a spectator at Adelaide Oval, Bradman saw a young Darren Lehmann hammer a double century in the Sheffield Shield. He also watched on television as Martin Crowe sculpted a century of his own in the Perth Test.
In the winter of 1991, Bradman was discerning the first signs of decline for the great West Indian team, even though they had beaten Australia at home earlier in the year. He also rated the performance of Mark Taylor, while being awed by the strokeplay of a young Mark Waugh.
“Though we lost the rubber in West Indies I don’t think the gods were on our side and I would back us to beat them next time,” Bradman wrote. “We now have a super left-hand opener in Taylor and Mark Waugh is all class, better than his brother Steve who did so well on our last tour of England.”
The following year in Sri Lanka, Border broke a century drought that lasted four summers, raising a pithy reaction from Bradman.
Ricky Ponting batting for Australia at 21.Credit: Vince Caligiuri
In the spring of 1995, Bradman saw Ricky Ponting play a “beautiful innings” up close and tagged him a “future Test prospect”.
The following summer, Bradman observed the decline of the once-great West Indian team.
There were more tough times that summer and afterwards for Taylor, in the midst of a long form slump that very nearly cost him the Australian captaincy. Bradman rated Taylor a better captain than Border, and was understanding of why he had been retained.
A century in Birmingham saved Taylor’s tenure, and he went on to lead the team until January 1999.
Running the game
As time ticked by, Bradman felt himself growing more distant from the game and its administration.
He resigned from his committee posts with the South Australian Cricket Association in 1986, lamenting the coarsening of international sport.
This is not to say that Bradman did not retain strong opinions.
During the 1980s, England took a fearful battering from the West Indies, and many English followers bemoaned a lack of oversight from umpires about short-pitched bowling. Brough was one of them, and got a succinct reply.
Umpires were still a topic of discussion in 1992, particularly around the World Cup held that year in Australia and New Zealand.
Bradman was staunchly in favour of each country retaining the right to have home umpires.
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