By that Saturday evening the Bowral boy was undefeated on 234, and within a year was called to Sydney for trials conducted by the State selectors. He celebrated his St George first grade debut in late 1926 with a century in even time. In December of 1927 he travelled to Adelaide for his first Sheffield Shield game.

The most celebrated of first-class careers began with a boundary off Clarrie Grimmett, and proceeded without fuss to a century. All the fanfare that day was reserved for Bill Ponsford, who was busy setting a new world record of 437 over in Melbourne. At the Adelaide Oval umpire George Hele was as impressed by the nineteen year old’s self-confidence as by his ability.

This cheerful and absolute self-belief would soon be shared by millions. The confidence as much as the uncanny skill would break bowlers’ hearts for decades to come.

Within a year he was playing his first Test match. By early 1930 he had broken Ponsford’s record, and made certain his place in the touring side for England. By the end of that northern summer, in one unbelievable bound, he had also made certain a unique place in cricketing history.

This was the tour he began with a double century, the year he became the first tourist to score 1000 runs before the end of May. In Test matches alone he scored 974 runs at an average of just under 140. At Lord’s a chanceless 254 left the critics groping for words. “The most murderous onslaught I have ever known in a Test match,” wrote Cardus years later.

Then came a memorable July day in Leeds, when the youngster marched into history and the Yorkshire heart. The eager, lithe figure stepped confidently into the Headingley sunshine, to face a strong England attack already buoyed by an early Australian scalp.

When stumps were drawn that evening, his score stood at 309 not out. It was an innings so glorious, reported The Times next day under the headline “Bradman Versus England”, as to be classed “incomparable.”

The 14 year-old Leonard Hutton was one of 20,000 who watched in wonder. When he later broke the Don’s record, he was to spend almost twice as long at the crease, and thus highlight an aspect of Bradman’s batting so easily lost in a maze of statistics. He almost invariably scored quickly, and the sense of anticipation, the attractive cricket thus created began to draw huge crowds to any game in which he played.

His rise and rise coincided with the onset of Depression, and for many whose lives were hopeless in the 1930s the young genius offered near certain hope each time he strode to the crease. His first-class career shows a century (often doubled or even trebled) every second match.

Sheffield Shield crowds swelled to unheard-of levels.

By 1936-7 when he had moved to Adelaide, 84 per cent of Sydney’s Shield revenue for the season came from the South Australian game, when Bradman was back in town. Little wonder that his first class career coincided with what became known simply as The Bradman Era.

Bradmania became a national epidemic, with the mixed results that always ensue. The young man himself, though assured and canny in his handling of so public a life, soon wearied of adulation and 24 hour exposure.

The most infamous and public confrontation sparked by his phenomenal ability was, of course, the Bodyline series of 1932-33. The tactics and attitudes of the patrician English captain, Douglas Jardine were designed specifically to contain Bradman and win the Ashes. But everything is relative, and it is often forgotten that an improvising Bradman still topped the Australian averages and eclipsed the English stars Sutcliffe and Hammond, who had no bodyline to face.

Also forgotten in the maze of batting statistics are his other skills. As a young man he was without peer in the outfield, “none more thrilling in chase and pick-up and deadly return”, wrote Cardus. Denzil Batchelor recalled one memorable run-out: “The flying Bradman took the ball inches from the fence in his fingertips and, apparently straightening while still airborne, without putting foot to ground, broke the far wicket with his throw-in.”

More significant for Australian cricket in the long term was his captaincy. Appointed vice-captain under Woodfull for the 1934 Ashes tour, he took over as captain for the 1936-7 series at home. As with each fresh challenge, Bradman was single-minded in his application to the new job. In time his sure hand, shrewd judgement, and will to win were to make him one of the most successful of all captains, though in fairness it should always be remembered he had Bradman to bat for him.

It was in adversity that his personal qualities emerged most clearly. In the final “timeless’ Test at the Oval in 1938, the Australians fielded through a mammoth English innings which sealed their defeat by an innings and 579 runs. “I do not think I have everadmired anything on the cricket field so much as his leadership during those heartbreaking days,” wrote H.S. Altham. “His own fielding was an inspiration in itself, and ... it was, one felt, his courage and gaiety that alone sustained his side.”

It was feared - Bradman himself was confident - that he would not return to the first-class game after the war. But of course he did, and capped his career leading a new generation of players on that final, triumphant tour of England in 1948. This trip saw the fullest flowering of his abilities beyond the bat. He was a canny tactician and selector, captain-encourager, and ambassador in an endless round of social functions, multiplied almost beyond human capacity simply because this was Bradman’s last tour.

The vacuum on his retirement was inevitable. “Suddenly cricket was like a room with the light switched off,” wrote Ray Robinson. However the legend, so firmly entrenched in the Australian psyche, continued to grow.

In less public but no less effective ways his light continued after 1948. A selector effectively from 1936-7 through till 1971 with only a brief break, he was, said Richie Benaud, “easily the best selector I came across in the game anywhere in the world.

He also served two terms as incisive chairman of the Australian Board of Control.

He contributed untold wisdom and assistance at every level of the game, notably in various capacities in his adopted South Australia. As player, so as selector and administrator, he pressed for lively, positive, entertaining cricket, for the declaration above the safe draw, a stirring result above stolid mediocrity.

From the time of his marriage to childhood sweetheart Jessie Menzies (“my best critic and my best friend”), he kept his personal life largely shielded from the public eye.

Maintaining a life out of the public glare was one hardship among many. Sir Donald himself nearly died on the 1934 tour of England, after an emergency appendix operation and the threat of full-blown peritonitis. As he prepared to take over the captaincy in 1936, the Bradmans lost their first-born child - a day-old son. Their two surviving children, John and Shirley, had to transcend serious or chronic conditions. Lieutenant D.G. Bradman was invalided out of the Army in 1941 with fibrositis, and for a time it seemed he wouldn’t play much of anything again.

Through all of this Sir Donald had to deal with the consequences of fame, virtually undiminished by his retirement from public view. He had to steer as sane a course as possible through the massive industry which grew around his name. Privately, he dealt with hundreds of requests, letters and enquiries every week of his life. More than any other Australian of the twentieth century, Don Bradman gave practical expression to our hopes and the promise of a new independence. In Don Bradman, Depression Australia saw the egalitarian answer: the country boy with no privileges, modest, cheerful and with confidence unlimited in his own superb ability.

The Don carried within himself the sense of our identity in other, perhaps deeper ways. In him we saw incarnate the belief that success was a matter of ability and self-confidence, not birth or class.

His slight figure carried also the sense of vulnerability we felt as a nation. For a few days in 1934, when rumours of his death were in the air, a sense of inevitabililty haunted a people accustomed to losing heroes like Les Darcy and Phar Lap to alien, faraway deaths. Had not Victor Trumper, too, died thus young?

Then suddenly hope rose, and the Bradman legend survived. And unlike most legends that survive, his continued to grow. And it grew for the rest of a century which his life, more than any other, has epitomised for Australia and Australians.