Australia will celebrate the centenary of their greatest sporting legend Donald Bradman today by naming the star batsman’s sleepy boyhood town “the world’s spiritual home of cricket.”
Schoolchildren, cricketers and Australians of all walks of life were expected to mark what would have been the 100th birthday of the famed cricketer today. Bradman died in 2001, aged 92.
The accolades were already pouring in yesterday, with Australia’s current cricket captain Ricky Ponting praising the man known simply as “The Don” as the game’s untouchable superhero.
“It’s almost like he’s separate from the game,” Ponting said. “He would have been the stand-out player whatever generation he played in.”
The chairman of the Bradman Foundation, Michael Ball, said excitement was building in Bowral, population 11,500, where Bradman spent his early years and where a cricketing museum bears his name.
Ball said that among the celebrations, the Bradman Museum would announce that it would be expanded to include an international cricket Hall of Fame.
It would become “the world’s spiritual home of cricket — Don being by far the best cricketer of all time,” Ball said.
“It will not only be the Bradman Museum but it will be the international cricket Hall of Fame whose captain will be Don Bradman and the team will be obviously the best,” Ball said.
“The initial team of 12 people will be from all over the world — I don’t know exactly who they will be but they will include people like [Sachin] Tendulkar from India.”
The first 12 would be chosen by a panel of selectors headed by former Australian captain and long-time commentator Richie Benaud.
Bradman was Australia’s first global superstar and has left an indelible imprint on the national psyche.
“He gave Australia pride and hope at a time when, through the depression and WWII we really needed it,” Ball said of the man who led the Australian team of “Invincibles” on their 1948 tour of England.
“We had a tiny population then and the fact that he could go out and be the world’s best gave a lot of hope to Australia,” he said. “I think it’s one of the reasons why Australia does so well in sport now. We can approach any sport and challenge the world’s best.”
Bradman was born in the town of Cootamundra but it was in Bowral where he first learned to play cricket. As a boy, he honed his reflexes and strokes by hitting a golf ball against a water tank with a cricket stump.
He played for Australia for 20 years, playing 52 Tests from 1928/29 to 1948 and retiring with an unbeaten batting average of 99.94.
Bradman’s centenary will be marked by school children singing Happy Birthday on Bradman Oval in Bowral. Events will be held around the country, including a dinner hosted by Hollywood star Hugh Jackman in Sydney.
Ball said the carpenter’s son from rural New South Wales might have been embarrassed by so much fanfare.
“He would have been quite shy about it,” Ball said. “I actually have a letter from him where he talks about fame being his unsought companion all his years and that’s how he felt.”
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