On a new documentary about Don Bradman:
When Indian batting champion Sachin Tendulkar studied footage of Don Bradman in action, he was impressed not so much by Bradman's strokes as by his attitude.(Yo, thanks: Ian Holliday.)"The thing which really struck me," he says, "was his aggressive batting. You could make out while playing shots he really meant it. He wanted to demoralise the opposition ... you can make out the body language."
Tendulkar is one of 30 people who speak about Bradman in a two-hour documentary, Bradman: Reflections On The Legend, which ABC TV is screening over two Sunday evenings, September 12 and 19.
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The documentary... add[s] a number of fresh stories to the 1000 or so in circulation.One is told by Lord Moore of Wolvercote, a former private secretary to the Queen. Moore was a boy when Bradman first toured England in 1930, and he was taken by his father to watch Bradman bat against Kent.
When Bradman was out cheaply, leg before, deceived by a top-spinner bowled by A P "Tich" Freeman, Moore and a crowd of other boys swarmed onto the field to get his autograph.
"We surrounded him," Moore says. "To our consternation he took his bat in his hand and waved it ferociously at us, waved us out of the way. It was quite dangerous, really. So we scattered without our autograph and he went into the pavilion."
The story has two sequels. In one, Bradman scored 205 not out in the second innings. In the other, when Moore accompanied the Queen on a visit to Adelaide in 1986, he met Bradman at an official lunch and asked him if he remembered the incident.
Bradman replied: "Yes, I remember it clearly. I was very angry, I really was. He diddled me with that top-spinner...
"I'm awfully sorry. I must make amends."
So he signed a menu, and Moore left with the autograph Bradman had denied him 56 years before.
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Asked whether Bradman's Test average of 99.94 can ever be equalled, Tendulkar says: "I think it's close to impossible. 99.94 is a very special thing. It's a god's gift."