A Good Innings

When Australian cricket legend Donald Bradman fell ill with peritonitis in London in September 1934, King George V was not amused. "I want to know everything," he reportedly said upon hearing the news. It was a measure of the esteem in which Bradman was held, even by his nemeses the English.

This revealing anecdote — and much more — is chronicled in Alan Eason's book, The A-Z of Bradman, an alphabetical compendium of useful and useless information on the venerated cricketer, who died in 2001.

Eason's ordering is obtuse (the King George snippet comes under I for "I want to know" and not, say, K for King George) but it really doesn't matter where the book falls open — this is a work for dipping. Cricket lovers will be contentedly stroking chins over such arcana as the number of first-class appearances Bradman made before his first test (nine) or the highest number of consecutive test innings against England in which he did not score a century (11).

A couple of entries flick at Bradman's famously prickly character, but overall the tome — published to coincide with his centenary — is respectful. Such is Bradman's posthumous clout, and as cricket writer Gideon Haigh says in the foreword: "We are content for the deeds to stand for the man."