On August 27, 1908, Australia's batting legend Donald Bradman was born to George and Emily Bradman in Cootamundra, a town in New South Wales in 1908. His rise in professional cricket started in 1927 when
he made his first-class debut at the Adelaide Oval, at the age of 19. Playing his debut game for New South Wales, he notched up an impressive ton. In the final contest of the season against Victoria at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), he struck another ton. In November 1928, Bradman broke into international cricket with his appearance in the first Ashes Test, played in Brisbane. Australia won the game by 675 runs and Bradman could score only 18 and one.
In the second Test, Bradman was dropped from the playing XI but in the third game, when he got the opportunity, he dominated bowlers. He produced the knocks of 79 and 112 but his batting efforts couldn’t hand victory to the Aussies. Bradman added a massive milestone to his name in the 1947-48 season, when he smashed a ton against India, who were touring Australia for the first time. While serving Australian XI in Sydney, he notched up his 100th first-class ton and broke into the record books as the only Aussie to do so.
Donald Bradman’s last Ashes series
In June 1948, Australia reached England to play The Ashes and Donald Bradman was handling the reins of the side. The Aussies recorded a 4-0 win and Bradman ended up as the third most successful batter in the series. He accumulated 508 runs with two hundreds and a fifty in nine innings of five matches. At The Oval, his final innings of the Test career came in which he couldn’t score any runs. Australia won that game by an innings and 149 runs.
Bradman retired from Test cricket in 1948 with 6996 runs in 80 innings of 52 games. During his 20-year career, he hoarded 29 hundreds and 13 fifties and he concluded his career with a stellar average of 99.94. The 1948-49 season was his last appearance in domestic cricket. Talking about his First-Class numbers, he scored 28067 runs in 338 innings of 234 games.
