An Encounter with a Legend

SIR DONALD BRADMAN

DOES 2 Halden Street. Kensington Park, Adelaide. South Australia mean anything to you? Probably nothing. If u aren’t a desperate cricket fan. But if you are, then you’ll understands, for we’re talking about the address of a shrine – to put it simply, the house of Sir Donald George Bradman.

To say Bradman is a living legend, would be a classic understatement. Yet he is also recluse, not perhaps as reticent as Gret a Garbo was, but every close. If seeing him is importable, reading about him is equally difficult for Bradman has withdrawn from public life, becoming a mysterious personality reluctant always to give interviews. The last of which was done God knows then.

Needless to say, everyone in Australia’s cricketing fraternity knows who the ‘Don’ is, but in this land of the immigrant not everybody else does. The taxi driver for instance who drove me from Adelaide Airport to my hotel had never heard of ‘Halden Street’, but considering he was of Greek descent he was quickly forgiven.But that was nothing. The cab driver the next day, having located ‘Halden Street’ after consulting his map book at length. Seemed suitably impressed when I mentioned I was off to see Bradman, “Yeah mate, though I didn’t follow cricket I’ve heard of him”. He should have left it at that. Instead he continued: “But tell me why did he cut off his beard? He looked better with it on”. By now I was totally bewildered, realising after much calculation that the cabbie, ignorant most definitely had confused Bradman with Allan Border.

However, by this point we were nearing Bradman’s house and I was getting increasingly nervous. How could one intrude into a legend’s privacy especially in a country where if you want to visit your mother or sister or whoever, you have to call in advanced to fix a time- that is the done thing? My fear was further compounded by a story the former Bengal captain Gopal Bose told me. A friend of his, lottering outside Bradman’s house, was picked up by the police and released later with the warning. “Never come here again. We consider this house our national property where trespassers are prosecuted.” Since a morning in the police station hardly excited me. I stopped the taxi about 500 meters from Bradman’s house and began looking for some form of help. A bunch of girls playing tennis proved useless, merely pointing to where his house was, which I knew anyway.

What now?
Surprisingly, an ally, and from a most unexpected quarter – Debashis Dutta, a journalist buddy from a rival paper. We both looked at each other and burst into together, for we had met merely about half an hour ago. When he said he was going to the bank, and I explained I was heading for the Adelaide Oval. And here we both were, having failed to outdo each other. Resigned to the fact that neither of us had a scoop. We decided the enormity of the venture demanded a truce- we would go for Bradman together.

Luck favours the brave remember, and luck for us was Lucy, a girl who lived in the house adjoining Bradman’s. Lucy’s advice was to- stick around, because he only comes out of his house once a day to ….