Sir Donald Bradman died a quarter century ago but will 'always be 99.94 not out'

Sir Donald Bradman's Test batting average is probably the most famous fraction in sport.

Usually rounded to two decimal places (99.94), it has endured with the steadiness of one of those numbers that denote natural limits or constants, such as pi, the speed of light or the golden mean.

In those cases, irregularity and apparent randomness seem to indicate an inscrutable fixity in the laws that govern the universe.

In Bradman's case, the lesson is instead a more human one.

Cricket may be a thing of beauty, but the game will not allow a single player, no matter how gifted, to conclude a career with an average of 100.

If 99.94 has a moral, it is that fallibility touches even the most formidable of mortals.

"That's a figure that most Australians of most generations are familiar with," cricket writer Mike Coward recently said of Bradman's batting average.

Other Bradman milestones have lately been on the minds of some of the sport's keenest observers.

While the quarter century was not a figure that mattered much to Bradman, who was in the business of tons, 25 years have now passed since his death in February 2001.

"As it turned out, Australia was about to start what became an epic Test series on Indian soil, and that was day one," cricket commentator Bharat Sundaresan, who grew up in Mumbai, recalled.

"I remember reading in the paper that morning that Don Bradman had died. I think I was maybe 15 years old, and I remember going to the ground and there was just this solemn air."

The teenage Sundaresan idolised The Don.

"Cricket was synonymous with Bradman even in India," he said.

"He sits in a hemisphere by himself, and whatever anyone achieves in cricket, especially as a batter, now and forever, will always be compared to … what Bradman did."

A private public figure

The passage of time always invites the question of legacy.

While a Bradman legend has flourished in Australia, it has been followed by attempts at reappraisal.

As a national symbol, Bradman has been unifying — but as a man, he remains divisive.

"He wasn't particularly fond of members of the fourth estate," said Mike Coward, who was a young reporter on an Adelaide newspaper when he first got to know the master batsman.

"He was such a public figure late into his life. He always fought against it, he always felt his space was being invaded. Because of his eminence, people wanted a bit of him right up until the end," he said.

"I never held him in any awe. I respected him, and respected his achievements."

In 2008, on the centenary of Bradman's birth, Coward was among those who wondered aloud about the possibility of The Don brightly fading.

But today he remains convinced of Bradman's place.

"He's part of the culture of the game," Coward said.

While Bradman was regarded in some quarters as being resistant to change, he was not always averse to innovation.

"He was a conservative, politically and socially, but he was also a liberal thinker particularly in terms of the way cricket evolved," Coward said.

"He had a tremendous intellect and his contribution to the game was inestimable in so many ways."

For Bharat Sundaresan, Bradman is too towering a figure to be knocked from his plinth.

"There are some Australian cricketers from different eras who had mixed opinions about Bradman," he said.

"But you speak to anyone not from Australia who probably didn't have that one-on-one dealing with him and just met him at a cricket venue or when he walked into the dressing room, there is just pure reverence."

Across the country, Bradman monuments, museums and memorabilia — including the baggy green cap that recently fetched $460,000 at auction — all ensure his ongoing renown.

"One thing we know about sport is that nostalgia never dies, nostalgia always sells, and nothing says nostalgia quite like Bradman," Sundaresan said.

"I can't see the story of Bradman or the history of Bradman ever not being told and re-told in this country."

The imperfection of glory

Test averages are matters of mere arithmetic.

Bradman was dismissed 70 times in Test matches, and scored not 7,000 runs but 6,996. The operation of dividing that final figure by the former one produces the awkward and tantalising 99.94.

When English leg-spinner Eric Hollies bowled him for a duck in his last innings, at The Oval in 1948, Bradman fell just short of a century average.

The elusive four runs that constitute the deficit instantly entered sporting folklore.

"I've often thought if I'd have known he wanted four and I'd have been bowling, I'd have given him a full toss," English bowler Sir Alec Bedser said, 50 years after that Test.

"That's how I look at it."

The sentiment is a noble one and was admirably expressed.

But it nevertheless obscures the fact that, at the time when he actually walked out to the wicket, Bradman was already averaging just over 100.

It was Hollies's googly that put the dent in Bradman's stats.

"Maybe there is an alternative universe where Eric Hollies doesn't get him out," Sundaresan said.

"But maybe because he finished with that average — which wasn't three figures, but was two figures dot two decimal points — that just adds to the legacy that he's always had.

Very few of us are fortunate enough to enjoy careers of such abundant success that failure enhances, rather than diminishes, our reputations.

But Bradman was an exception.

His 99.94 will forever glow in tribute to the imperfection of glory.

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