‘Did you hear about the old man who turned 100?’ asked Sir Donald Bradman in a cheerful note to the journalist Johan Rivett in October 1968. ‘They asked him what it felt like. He said wonderful – I haven’t an enemy in the world. The buggers are all dead.’ That’s our Don: twenty years retired and still thinking in hundreds, eh? This century, it turned out, was one he could not overhaul: he was ninety-two when he died on 25 February 2001. But the job was done; the buggers were all dead. Bradman remains, to use Christine Wallace’s words from her new book The Private Don, ‘the best-ever player in the best-loved sport in the most sports-loving nation in the world’. Wallace’s book attests another quality: he remains a sporting media property without compeer.
The Waugh Era: The making of a cricket empire 1999-2004 by Greg Baum
ABC Books, $32.95 pb, 245 pp
'One who will': The search for Steve Waugh by Jack Egan
Allen and Unwin, $49.95 hb, 352 pp
The Private Don by Christine Wallace
Allen & Unwin, $45 hb, 276 pp
ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.
If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.
If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.
Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.