Perhaps the most famous Test innings of all time came on an otherwise pleasant August 14, 1948 evening.
A little before 6pm, a five-foot-seven-inch soon-to-be 40-year-old batsman raced down the stairs at The Oval in London to a rousing ovation from the fans and opposing English players. The captain of his side, he could have decided to send in a nightwatchman for the few overs that remained in the day, but had chosen not to.
Facing up to a 36-year-old leg-break bowler with 20 Test wickets to his name, the Australian No 3 went on the backfoot to the first ball and patted it defensively to silly mid-off. The next, a googly, would draw him forward, slip past his defences and castle Donald George Bradman. That rarest of Nature's creatures, a genius with an eye for business—as RC Robertson Glasgow memorably summed him up—had been dismissed for a second-ball duck in an innings which lasted all of a minute!
John Arlott, the doyen of cricket commentators, captured the moment on air: "And what do you say under these circumstances? I wonder if you see the ball very clearly in your last Test in England, on a ground where you've played some of the biggest cricket in your life and where the opposing side has just stood round you and given you three cheers and the crowd has clapped you all the way to the wicket. I wonder if you see the ball at all."
The failure—and let's be clear that Bradman dismissed all talk of having been misty-eyed—in what turned out to be his last Test innings meant the Don ended up with 6996 runs at an average of 99.94. It is a number at once breathtaking and angst-inducing. Just four more runs in that final knock and his average would have stood at an incredible 100.
What a journey it had been for cricket's champion bat whose destiny had been forged 17000 kilometres away in the biggest town in New South Wales' Southern Highlands. Such was the influence those early years would wield in his life that the Don famously turned into a Peter-Panish 'Boy from Bowral' in the hearts of many.
In Bradman land
The quaint town, which continues to march to a gentler beat even now, remains worthy of a pilgrimage for all fans of cricket.
Bradman shifted to Bowral in 1911 and lived there till 1924. At 52 Shepherd Street, which stands to this day and which was lovingly restored by a former owner to recreate the life the Don lived, he honed his skills in his own home-grown way.
Australian cricketer and writer Arthur Mailey had written of how the young perfectionist trained alone in the Wisden Cricket Monthly.
"Using the round tank stand in the backyard, Don would take up his stance in front of the back door, which was the 'wicket'. Using a cricket stump as a bat, he would throw a golf ball at the tank stand, then attempt to hit it on the rebound. If he missed, he was usually 'clean-bowled', as the back door presented a large target.
"The golf ball came back at him at lightning speed and it helped him develop amazing reflexes. Don not only had to contend with the speed of the ball but also the manner in which it reacted after hitting the uneven ground on its way towards him," Mailey wrote.
A short walk from this famous address is a ground the young Don knew as Glebe Park and near where, as he recounted later, he decided that a young Jessie Menzies was the love of his life. Renamed the Bradman Oval in 1947, this was also the cricketing green on which the precocious youngster at the age of 11 would make 55 not out and relay the first intimations of his genius to a wider world.
A season later, appearing for the Bowral Intermediate High School against nearby rivals Mittagong, Bradman went on to smash an unbeaten 115 out of a total of 256. There was no stopping this singular cricketer after that and he would go on to score 210 more hundreds in all of cricket.
Once you climb back up the steps of the Bradman Oval after soaking it all in, you step on to even more hallowed turf: the memorial garden where the ashes of Bradman and his wife lay scattered. The Oval and this stretch of land are now part of the Bradman Museum. It was to secure the Museum's future that the Don gave his final interview to Kerry Packer's Channel Nine with a $1 million telethon thrown in.
Inside, cricket and its origins come alive. It's not just Bradmania, including the Don's first bat, that is on offer. Countless stories of the game—from the magical to the whimsical—are celebrated too. Along with the greats (did you know WG Grace played a match at the Bradman Oval?) pop in many memorable larrikins.
The stories, like one about women being responsible for the development of round-arm bowling, are delightful. "That is a theory. A lot of cricket is legend as you might have realised," says the elderly and ever-enthusiastic Bruce Pearson, our guide, with a gleam in his eye when prodded further.
There is also the Bradman walk for those interested. It covers among other landmarks the Empire Cinema, where a reception and dance were held to see the Don off on his first tour of England in 1930, the Corbett Gardens, where he returned victorious and addressed the crowds who had gathered to see him, and his school and two of the houses he stayed in.
And there's something about Mary
Bowral is not all about Bradman.
The town also was home to a girl who went on to achieve great renown as an author. Before shifting to England at the age of 24, Helen Lyndon Guff spent many years of her childhood in the town, after moving there as an eight-year-old.
Taking the pen name PL Travers, Guff would go on to write the Mary Poppins stories that have delighted children the world over. The Mary Poppins Birthplace Statue, unveiled in December 2013 and open to visit, commemorates Travers and her magical nanny, said to have been birthed from the stories Guff told her sisters while in Bowral.
Interestingly, before the statue's inauguration had come the Welcome Home Mary Poppins event on May 7, 2011. It featured the largest-ever umbrella mosaic, bringing together 2115 people, and an umbrella dance by 1216 people. Both of these were Guinness World Records then. And guess where these were staged? The Bradman Oval, of course.
There's a lot more to savour in elegant and meditative Bowral. While doing so, dwell on the power of imagination of two kids left to their own devices with no gadgets to hem them in. At a time when we wonder endlessly about AI-driven machines overtaking us, these are reminders of how human ingenuity can be nurtured—and how peaks even beyond 99.94 can be scaled.
(The writer was in Bowral at the invitation of Destination New South Wales.)
