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Australia mark centenary of great Don Bradman
Sydney—Australians on Wednesday marked the centenary
of their greatest sporting hero, cricketer Don Bradman, by celebrating
the fact his unbeaten record is still untouchable 60 years after he
quit the sport.
Bradman, who died in 2001 aged 92, played his last match in England in
1948 and retired with a yet-to-be topped Test batting average of
99.94.
Australian media used the occasion to revisit the legend of the ‘Boy
from Bowral’ whose run-scoring feats lifted the hopes of the country
during the Depression and inspired generations of sportsmen and women
to come.
Newspapers splashed images of the small-statured batsman across their
pages while television bulletins re-broadcast rare snippets from
interviews with ‘The Don’, who loathed his celebrity.
In Bradman’s boyhood home of Bowral, a small town south of Sydney,
scores of children formed a massive 100 on the cricket oval on which
he first played, and sang ‘Happy Birthday’.
Australian captain Ricky Ponting, who will deliver the Bradman Oration
at a dinner to be hosted by Hollywood star Hugh Jackman later
Wednesday, led tributes to the global cricketing hero.
“That Bradman made a century on average every time he batted is
remarkable in itself, but to realise his batting average is virtually
twice as high as anyone who played Test cricket for any length of time
shows why he is one of sport’s great stories,” Ponting wrote in The
Australian.
Ponting said sporting records were made to be broken, with the Beijing
Olympics no exception with the breathtaking feats of swimmer Michael
Phelps and runner Usain Bolt. But Bradman’s was an “unassailable”
record, he said.
“Of the 2,519 batsmen who have taken the crease in 131 years of Test
cricket, Bradman stands alone and untouched,” he said. “I am no aware
of any other sport which has one competitor so far above any other
performer.”—AFP |
