Donald Bradman

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Sir Donald 'Don' George Bradman, KBE, AC (August 27, 1908 – February 25, 2001) was an Australian cricket player who is universally regarded as the greatest batsman of all time, and one of Australia's greatest popular heroes. He has the highest Test match batting average of all time, at 99.94.

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Early years

Born in Cootamundra, but raised in Bowral where the Bradman Museum and Bradman Oval are sited, he was noted as a youth for his obsessive practice, at home, he invented his own one-man cricket game using a stump and a golf ball. A water tank stood on a brick stand behind the Bradman home on a covered and paved area. The ball rebounded from the curved brick stand at high speed and varying angles and he soon developed split-second speed and accuracy.

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After a brief dalliance with tennis he dedicated himself to cricket, playing for local sides before attracting sufficient attention to be drafted in grade cricket in Sydney at the age of 18. Within a year he was representing New South Wales and within three he had made his Test debut.

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Test cricket

Receiving some criticism in his first Ashes series in 1928-1929 he worked constantly to remove the few weaknesses in his game and by the time of the Bodyline series was without peer as a batsman.

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Possessing a great stillness whilst awaiting the delivery, his shotmaking was based on a combination of excellent vision, speed of both thought and footwork and a decisive, powerful bat motion with a pronounced follow-through. Technically his play was almost flawless, strong on both sides of the wicket with only his sternest critics noting a tendency for his backlift to be slightly angled toward the slip cordon.

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Despite occasional battles with illness, he continued to dominate world cricket throughout the 1930s and is credited with raising the spirit of a nation suffering under the vagaries of the Great Depression, until war intervened.

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Over an international career spanning 20 years from 1928 to 1948, Bradman's statistical achievements were unparalleled. He broke scoring records for both first-class and Test cricket; his highest international score (334) stood for decades as the highest ever test score by an Australian. It was then equalled by Mark Taylor, who declared with his score at 334 not out in what many regard as a deliberate tribute to Bradman. In 2003 it was once more equalled, then surpassed by another fellow Australian, Matthew Hayden, who fittingly went on to gain the highest score in Test cricket (380) up to that time.

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For decades, Bradman was the only player with two Test triple centuries in a career. He was joined by West Indian Brian Lara in 2004; Lara broke Hayden's record, and recorded the first Test quadruple century in history, in the process of joining Bradman in this exclusive club.

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Later career

Approaching forty years of age (most players today are retired by their mid-thirties), he returned to play cricket after World War II, leading one of the most talented teams in Australia's history. In his farewell 1948 tour of England the team he led, dubbed the "Invincibles", went undefeated throughout the tour, a feat unmatched before or since.

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On the occasion of his last international innings, Bradman needed four runs to be able to retire with a batting average of 100, but was dismissed for nought (in cricketing parlance, "a duck") by spin bowler Eric Hollies. Applauded onto the pitch by both teams, it was sometimes claimed that he was unable to see the ball due to the tears welling in his eyes, a claim Bradman always dismissed as sentimental nonsense. "I knew it would be my last test match after a career spanning 20-years", he said, "but to suggest I got out as some people did, because I had tears in my eyes is to belittle the bowler and is quite untrue." Regardless, he was given a guard of honour by players and spectators alike as he left the ground with a batting average of 99.94 from his 52 tests, nearly double the average of any other player before or since. His average is immortalised as the post office box number of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - "Box 9994 in your capital city".

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Skill

Bradman so dominated the game that special bowling tactics, known as fast leg theory or Bodyline, regarded by many as unsporting and dangerous, were devised by England captain Douglas Jardine to reduce his dominance in a series of international matches against England in the Australian summer of 1932 - 1933. The principal English exponent of Bodyline was the Nottinghamshire pace bowler Harold Larwood, and the contest between Bradman and Larwood was to prove to be the focal point of the competition.

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Some indication of his superlative skill was that his average for that series, 56.57, is above the career averages of all but a handful of international players in the 125-odd years of international cricket matches. Statistical analyses give some credence to the claim that Bradman dominated his sport more than Pel?, Wayne Gretzky, Ty Cobb, Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, amongst other champions of their disciplines.

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Further evidence of his supreme athletic skills was revealed when Bradman missed the 1935-36 tour to South Africa due to illness. During his absence from cricket, Bradman took up squash to keep himself fit. He subsequently won the South Australian Open Squash Championship.

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KBE: REDIRECT Order of the British Empire...

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August 27: August 27 is the 239th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (240th in leap years), with 126 days remaining....

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