Dream team

DOES Roland Perry's book Bradman's Best represent the ideas of its author or the opinions of the Don? Sunil Gavaskar, for example, cannot believe a man who so scrupulously shied away from controversy would ever have offered an eleven of his favourite cricketers. Perry, however, doggedly maintains that the list is Bradman's own. He says the Don asked him to reveal the list only after he died, so that he would not personally have to account for whom he had chosen and whom he had left out.

I myself think that the eleven is authentic, for the reason that it reflects the biases of the man. Cricketers and fans asked to choose all-time elevens always accord a massive preference to players of their generation, their country and (on occasion) their state.

As a cricketer Bradman may have been a non pareil, but as a cricket lover he reveals himself as one of the herd, prone to the same narrow-minded prejudices as the rest of us. How else do we explain the choice of as many as seven Australians, or of three other members of his Sydney cricket club?

The omissions are equally striking. Why has Bradman left out that supremely gifted all-rounder Keith Miller, whose performances for his all-conquering side of 1946-48 were comfortably the equal of Arthur Morris, Ray Lindwall and Don Tallon, a trio whom the Don has chosen? Must it not be because of Miller's truculence, his defiance of authority and, not least, his sharp criticisms of Bradman himself? More revealing still is the person Bradman has designated as his twelfth man. If to leave Miller out is churlish, to ask Walter Hammond to carry the drinks is an act of pure spitefulness.

Bradman first came across Hammond in the Ashes series of 1928-29. In that winter the Don made his international debut, and in that series Hammond scored 905 runs. He was at once hailed as the most accomplished cricketer of his generation. People thought Hammond would dominate world cricket for the next decade, and more. He was the best batsman in the world, the best slip fieldsman in the world, and a first-rate swing bowler too.

But within a year-and-a-half, Hammond had his crown wrested from him. In the next Ashes series, in England in 1930, Bradman scored 974 runs. It was not such the number of runs as the way they were made that was definitive. No one had scored faster or with less effort or with more certainty. So infallible did he seem that a duck by him was deemed more newsworthy than a double hundred by someone else.

In any other epoch, Walter Hammond would have been top dog. He continued to score runs, and take wickets and catches, always with a classical elegance. Some of his own innings, such as the 240 he hit at Lord's in 1938, were acknowledged masterpieces. But he would inevitably be compared with Bradman.

Once, with the rubber at stake, he was bowled in the first over of the day, misreading a wrong-un from "Chuck" Fleetwood-Smith. It was an error of a mortal, but next day's newspapers said that "no one would have got Bradman out at a time like that". The rub of the green also tended to run against Hammond. When England toured Australia in 1946-47, Bradman was ill and out of form, and if he had failed in the first Test might very well have announced his retirement. Early on in his innings he was caught in the gully by Jack Ikin, but given not out. The error was so blatant that even some of his team-mates thought Bradman should have "walked". When he did not, Hammond went over from slip and told him: "That's a fine way to start a Test series." But Bradman went on to score 187 and, his confidence restored, to lead Australia to a convincing victory in the rubber.

When Hammond died in 1965, he was the subject of an extended obituary in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, this written by Neville Cardus. The Bradman of cricket writers said here that "Wally was indeed cricket in excelsis. You merely had to see him walk from the pavilion on the way to the wicket" to sense you were in the presence of greatness. In a loving tribute, Cardus recalled his style and his strokes, his epic innings, and the impact he made on the game. He spoke of Hammond's "skill and his poise", of his "taste and breeding", of how "his cricket was his only way of self-realisation. On the field of play he became a free agent, trusting fully to his rare talents".

The reader may rightly ask: Where could Miller or Hammond have fit into Bradman's eleven? At the expense of Alec Bedser, I think. Their exclusion and Bedser's inclusion has made this side a batsman short. In the Don's list, the wicket-keeper Don Tallon bats at the ridiculously high position of number six. The captain may think that five batsmen are all he needs, especially as he is one of them. But even Bradman was known to fail on occasion.

And what if his team encounters a sticky wicket, a surface to which the Don was notoriously unsuited, also a surface on which Hammond was an acknowledged master? Bradman says he chose Bedser because he wanted a medium-pace swing bowler to complement the pace of Lindwall and Lillee.

That may perhaps explain his omission of Miller, whose style of bowling was fast and furious. But consider what Neville Cardus had to say about Hammond with the ball: "He could, if he had given his mind constantly to the job, have developed into a bowler as clever as Alec Bedser himself with a new ball. Here, again, he was in action the embodiment of easy flowing motion - a short run, upright and loose, a sideways action, left shoulder pointing down the wicket, the length accurate, the ball sometimes swinging away late".

As clever as Alec Bedser with the new ball. Also the second best batsman of his time, and easily the finest slip fielder. Yes, to leave Hammond out of the eleven was what I have said it to be: an act of spite. Perhaps the Groundsman of Mythical Matches will give Bradman his reward: either a wet wicket on which he and his team-mates will fail, or a green and bouncy track on which edges fly thick and fast while there is no Hammond to catch them.

Note: Bradman's eleven in batting order is: A.R. Morris; B.A. Richards; D.G. Bradman; S.R. Tendulkar; G.A. Sobers; D. Tallon; R.R. Lindwall; A.V. Bedser; D.K. Lillee; W.J. O'Reilly; C.V. Grimmett.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

The writer is the editor of The Picador Book of Cricket

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