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  • Hi there, everyone behind me.

  • That's the Adelaida evil and I'm here today to watch a day of test cricket on while I'm here, I want to tell you a story.

  • It's a number fire Lee type story about a cricketer who was pretty much without doubt the greatest player of all time and his name was Don Bradman.

  • The story of his career is often told through remarkable numbers, really big ones.

  • Yet the most important number, the one that brought his career toe a bit of sweet end, is the number zero.

  • Bradman was born in 19 8 and he played 52 test matches for Australia.

  • In addition to leading the Australian team toe many famous winds, Bradman's personal career was also exceptional.

  • England never won a test on this ground yet, but it doesn't know that I'm gonna win this one the way Redman is betting.

  • You see each time a cricket it goes out to bat, they contribute a personal score to the team's overall total.

  • Now, to fully appreciate this story, you're gonna have to understand that if a batsman's individual tally in one innings reaches 50 half century, that's pretty special.

  • The crowd will give them a cheer.

  • He completed his 15 much to the delight of the crime, but reaching 100 a century is the Holy Grail.

  • That'll usually get a standing ovation, the battlement acknowledging the crowd with a raised bat.

  • Here's a century at the Adelaide over today, Theo and he is Don Bradman, recognizing a century he wants scored.

  • Look at that fat in the air Don reaches 99 we can imagine the excitement of Spectators.

  • Then he does it Now.

  • Over the course of their career, a cricketer also has a batting average.

  • That's perhaps the best yardstick of their success, and it's easy to calculate.

  • Add together all those personal totals.

  • They're making each innings and divide by the number of times the batsman's out.

  • Now here's some of the best batsman of old time.

  • You might not recognize the mold, but take my word for it.

  • These are the ones with some of the highest average is, and you can see they generally average between 50 and 60.

  • That's considered pretty exceptional.

  • They're getting 1/2 century on average every time they bet.

  • So now what was Don Bradman's average and I try and get as many runs as I possibly can.

  • And if in getting those diamonds I should happen to break any record well, naturally I'm very pleased.

  • But I did not deliberately set out to try and break records well.

  • Over his 20 year career interrupted by World War Two, Bradman accrued a Siri's of remarkable scores and his average soared.

  • That's 200.

  • You can see he's average there on the right, going up and down.

  • You can see it passes 100 on a few occasions.

  • Done reaches his double century vans, already having got hit and going into his final test.

  • Here's the situation.

  • Bradman had scored 6996 runs and had been dismissed 69 times, his average incredibly over 100.

  • Now remember, most cricketers dream of scoring a single century in their career.

  • Don Bradman was about to retire, averaging a century at the highest level of the game, and here he is going out to bat in his final match in 1948.

  • Enter Don Bradman got a database Fredman needing just four runs before getting out that will take him to 7000 runs overall divided by 70 times out.

  • That's 100 as an average, four measly runs for a man who averages 100 per innings, four runs can easily be scored with a single swipe of the cricket bat.

  • Knowing it's his last innings, Bradman was given three cheers by his English opponents.

  • Very sportsmanlike follows bowling and Don playing perhaps his last test innings here.

  • No score here from his first ball, but that's okay.

  • But his second bow seized the unthinkable out for zero, noting cricket as a duck, well, it isn't often you get a big hand when you make a duct, but this was different.

  • Bradman's average had dipped to 99.94 where it would stay frozen for all time tantalizingly close to 100.

  • It's gone into cricketing folklore and almost seems fitting that a player considered so invincible ended just short of something that would have been so perfect.

  • Then you may wonder, why didn't Bradman postpone his retirement?

  • Try to remedy this, but Australia's next match was over a year away.

  • Bradman was now 40 years old and of course, he was now in a position where he would need to score Ah, 104 in his next innings and that would have been a tougher ask.

  • Now, to this day, no one has come close to Bradman's average.

  • He's so far above his peers that many consider him the most dominant athlete of any sport.

  • But it's this image of a kind of failure in his final innings that is among the most enduring.

  • Seeing him so fallible, it just goes to show nobody's perfect no, even Don Bradman our way.

Hi there, everyone behind me.

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