Reflections on Donald Bradman’s Career and Character

I wonder if anyone else remembers the BBC television program shown on the ABC many years ago, a historical drama about the rise and fall of King Edward VIII? I have forgotten the title. But I do remember the theme song. It was a 1920s hit ‘I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales!’ I am reminded of this line when I reflect on my association with the cricketing icon Don Bradman.

Yes, I knew Bradman … although it was only at second and third-hand.

At second-hand is my friend Gil Field, a colleague in departmental days. Gil told me once that when he had been a boy growing up in South Australia in the early 1950s, his father had taken him to the Adelaide Oval one day and contrived to introduce him to The Don. Gil was only about six years old at the time, but still remembers the great man gravely shaking his hand, and the awe which surrounded the occasion. It became a highlight in the Field family history. To his father’s chagrin, the…