Pakistan vs Australia
1998-10-16
On October 16, 1998, Australian captain Mark Taylor finished day two of the Peshawar Test on 334 not out — equalling Don Bradman's highest Australian Test score. The next morning he declared without batting on, choosing the team's chances of victory over the chance to break Bradman's record alone.
Australia vs West Indies
1961-02-17
Midway through the 1960-61 series — and impressed by the spirit Worrell's tourists had brought to Australia after the Tied Test — Sir Donald Bradman and the Australian Cricket Board commissioned a perpetual trophy from former Test fast bowler turned silversmith Ernie McCormick. They named it the Frank Worrell Trophy. It was the first major Test trophy named for a West Indian and remains the prize for every Australia v West Indies series.
England v Australia
1938-06-11
Following on 247 behind at Trent Bridge in June 1938, Stan McCabe played what Don Bradman would call the greatest innings he ever saw. With wickets falling at the other end, McCabe scored 232 in 235 minutes, the last 72 of those runs in just 28 minutes; he reached his double-hundred from 220 balls. Bradman called his team mates onto the pavilion balcony with the words, 'Come and look at this, you'll never see the like of it again.'
Australia v England
1937-01-01
On a wet New Year's Day pitch at the MCG in 1937, with Australia 0-2 down in the series, Don Bradman batted himself at No. 7, sent his tail in first to absorb the sticky, and then made 270 over almost eight hours. It is the highest score made on a sticky wicket in Test cricket, the innings that turned the 1936-37 Ashes, and the one Wisden in 2001 voted the greatest Test innings of the 20th century.
Australia v England
1936-12-04
Don Bradman's first series as Australia's captain, in 1936-37 against Gubby Allen's England, began with two heavy defeats and a press chorus calling for his replacement. Bradman responded with 270 at the MCG, 212 at Adelaide and 169 at the MCG again, and Australia won the next three Tests to take the Ashes 3-2 — the only time in Test history a side has lost the first two Tests of a five-Test series and recovered to win it. The captaincy that English critics had questioned was suddenly the captaincy of a man who would lead Australia for the next 12 years.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.
West Indies
1934-06-01
From the early 1930s English newspapers, and then much of the cricketing world, called George Headley 'the Black Bradman.' Headley, polite and reserved, never publicly objected; in private and in CLR James's account, he and many West Indian writers preferred to invert the formula — Bradman as 'the white Headley.' The nickname is a small case study in how race coloured even the most generous compliments paid to inter-war Caribbean cricketers.
England v Australia
1934-07-21
Four years after his 334 on the same ground, Don Bradman returned to Headingley in July 1934 and made another triple — 304 in 430 minutes, sharing a then world-record fourth-wicket stand of 388 with Bill Ponsford. The Test was drawn, but the partnership was the high mark of the 1934 Ashes and proof that Yorkshire's Test wicket could be Bradman's personal property.
Australia vs England
2 December 1932
The 1932-33 Bodyline series: England captain Douglas Jardine directed Harold Larwood to bowl short-pitched leg-theory at batsmen's bodies to stop Don Bradman. Nearly caused a diplomatic rupture between England and Australia; England won 4-1.
Queensland v New South Wales
1931-11-06
On 6 November 1931 at the newly opened Gabba, the Indigenous Queensland fast bowler Eddie Gilbert produced a six-ball over to Don Bradman that the world's best batsman would later call the fastest he had ever faced. Gilbert clipped Bradman's cap, sent a ball over his head, knocked the bat clean out of his hands, then had him caught behind for a duck. It is one of the most discussed overs in Australian cricket and the central episode in the tragic, unfinished story of an Aboriginal bowler whose action was ruled illegal but whose pace nobody disputed.
England v Australia
1930-07-11
On 11 July 1930 a 21-year-old Don Bradman walked in at 1 for 1 and by stumps had scored an unbeaten 309 — still the only triple-century in a single day's Test play. He went on to 334 the next morning, then the highest individual score in Test cricket, surpassing Andy Sandham's 325. The match drew, but the innings catapulted Bradman from prodigy to phenomenon and underwrote his world-record series tally of 974 runs.
England v Australia
1930-06-27
Two weeks before his Headingley triple, Bradman walked out at Lord's and produced what he would call, decades later, the finest innings of his life: 254 from 376 balls, 25 fours, almost every stroke struck in the meat of the bat. Australia made 729 for 6 declared, levelled the series, and put English bowling on notice that the 1930 tour would be unlike anything previous.
England v Australia
1930-08-16
With the series locked at 1-1 and the Ashes on the line, Bradman walked out at The Oval and made 232 across two days. Australia won by an innings and 39 runs, regained the urn, and finished a series in which Bradman had averaged 139.14. It was the innings during which Douglas Jardine, watching from the pavilion, began thinking seriously about leg theory.
New South Wales v Victoria
1929-01-11
Two months after his disappointing Test debut at Brisbane, Don Bradman made 340 not out for New South Wales against Victoria at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 1929 — at the time the highest individual score made at the SCG, and a single innings that doubled his Test team's confidence in him.
Australia v England
1928-11-30
On 30 November 1928 the 20-year-old Don Bradman made his Test debut against England at the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane. He scored 18 and 1 as Australia were beaten by 675 runs — the largest defeat in Test history at the time — and was dropped for the next Test before returning to begin a career that would average 99.94.