Bradman… And The Summer That Changed Cricket by Christopher Hilton (JR Books, £18.99) (From The Northern Echo)

Bradman… And The Summer That Changed Cricket by Christopher Hilton (JR Books, £18.99)

11:36am Monday 12th October 2009 in

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ADDED to the coloured clothing, floodlights and general razzmatazz ushered in by Kerry Packer’s World Series in 1978, the recent innovation of Twenty20 cricket truly amounts to a revolution in our “summer game”.

Christopher Hilton strives hard to persuade us that the explosive advent in England of Bradman, a nearinvincible run machine, was a similar earthquake. No doubt it seemed so at the time, 1930. Hilton quotes a remark by Percy Chapman, the England skipper: “I said yesterday that Bradman is a menace to English cricket. Today I go further. I think he may be the death of it.”

But though Bradman’s ruthless efficiency led to a toughening of the game, and arguably began the long road to the batsman-dominated slogfests of today, it still left cricket substantially the same spectacle it was before.

Hilton nevertheless demonstrates the huge impact of Bradman in that far-off summer. During the Oval Test, the Prince of Wales asked the young wonder, who had scored 112 before lunch: “How do you do it?”

Hilton records: “Nobody heard what Bradman replied.” Pity.