Kishalaya

Australia and infact whole world is celebrating the birth centenary of Sir Donald Bradman on August 27, 2008. Sir Don Bradman referred as the Australian “greatest living Australian” by Prime Minister John Howard, still has records which are still untouchable even after 60 years passed after Don Bradman quitted cricket. During a 20-year playing career, Bradman consistently scored at a level that made him, in the words of former Australia captain Bill Woodfull, “worth three batsmen to Australia”

The story that the young Bradman practised alone with a cricket stump and a golf ball is part of Australian folklore. Bradman’s meteoric rise from bush cricket to the Australian Test team took just over two years. Before his 22nd birthday, he had set many records for high scoring, some of which still stand, and became Australia’s sporting idol at the height of the Great Depression.

Bradman died in 2001 at the age of 92. He played his last match in England in 1948 and retired with a Test Batting Average of 99.94, which no one yet has come close to beat it.

On his Birth Centenary on August 27, 2008 Newspapers splashed images of the small-statured batsman across their pages while television bulletins re-broadcast rare snippets from interviews with ‘The Don’.

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,” Ponting said. “I am no aware of any other sport which has one competitor so far above any other performer.”

Labels : Don Bradman, Donald Bradman, The Don, greatest living australian, world record by Don Bradman, Ponting speech, Boy from Bowral