Clues came over time as I comprehended his values, attitudes and character. Two main impressions remain. Bradman's remarkable concentration sustained him for sittings of six hours at a time when I began interviewing him in 1995 for The Don. He was 86, but never faltered in his answers, which were often humorous, always crisp or layered, and cogent. It explains some of his success with the bat from 1928 to 1948. The second impression took time to absorb. It concerned his integrity and stands at the apex of Bradman's reputation. From the trivial to the profound, he cared about finding the truth. Bradman's handling of the issue of whether to ban the all-white South African Test cricket team from touring Australia in 1971-72 was his most important legacy. Bradman was anti-apartheid, yet believed South African cricketers were exempt because they had shown their opposition to racism.

"They have tried harder than our protesters to do something about it," he wrote in 1971 to Rohan Rivett, one of Australia's finer journalist-editors. "I cannot see why they should be blamed for the attitudes of a government with which they disagree." Accompanied by the South African ambassador, Bradman witnessed 1971's Australia-South Africa rugby Test in Sydney. He abhorred the violence of protesters, who invaded the field, and left with concerns that a cricket match would be hard to police, and that cricket would be worse for it. But in his last year as chairman of the Australian Cricket Board, Bradman stood firm. The cricket tour was still on. He told Rivett the rugby team "comprised mainly of [apartheid-supporting] Afrikaners", while white cricketers were "basically of English descent" and supported a political party not opposed to mixed sport.

"Politics should not come into sport," he concluded. This placed Bradman with 75 per cent of Australians. But Bradman had a flexible mind, and decided to explore the issue himself. He wrote to the anti-apartheid protest movement in Australia, asking them to explain the demonstrating. Meredith Burgmann was astonished to receive such a request from someone she regarded as typically, trenchantly Establishment.

Bradman was intrigued. He flew to South Africa to meet its prime minister, John Vorster, a wartime admirer of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. Vorster expected Bradman to support the tour, but the meeting quickly became tense, then sour. Bradman asked questions in his direct way about why blacks were denied the chance to represent their country. Vorster suggested they were intellectually inferior and could not cope with cricket's intricacies. Bradman asked Vorster: "Have you ever heard of Garry Sobers?" Vorster's racist attitudes - Bradman thought them "ignorant and repugnant" - contributed to his change of mind, which had been precipitated by Burgmann and Rivett. Bradman flew to Britain to meet Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, British political leaders who had dealt with the protest problem in England. Bradman returned to Australia with his mind made up. He reached agreement with Cricket Board fellow members, called a media conference and announced the tour's cancellation. Bradman made a simple one-line statement: "We will not play them [South Africa] until they choose a team on a non-racist basis." In South Africa, Vorster vented his anger publicly against Bradman while the African National Congress rejoiced. In response to Rivett's congratulations, Bradman wrote: "I appreciate the compliments but, no offence meant, I'm not really in the mood to feel elated. I've seen too many sides of the issue, the good and bad of each. I was not cut out to be a politician or banner-carrier.

"In my few moments of triumph, if any, in the modern arena, I have sought seclusion and peace, not publicity. But hate it as I might, publicity seems to be my lot." Bradman knew he had ruined the Test careers of some of the finest cricketers, including Barry Richards, Hylton Ackerman and Graeme and Peter Pollock. South Africa's team had been dominant, but now was in tatters and would have to disband.

Bradman's no-tour decision put the Australian Cricket Board in a hole financially, and Bradman invited a magnificent multiracial combination, led by Sobers and including Ackerman and the Pollock brothers, to play against Ian Chappell's young Australian team. The tour was a financial success. On the bigger issue, Bradman succeeded where politicians and protesters failed because he went beyond entrenched arguments to uncover the integrity of the matter. His reputation and fame meant the unexpected move was a massive international blow to apartheid. In April 1986, a Commonwealth group of seven "eminent persons", including Malcolm Fraser, visited the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, whose commanding presence belied his 24 years of incarceration. His first question was, "Is Don Bradman still alive?" Bradman had been Mandela's sporting hero, and his 1971 ban-the-tour decision deepened the endearment.

In 1993, a South African team, chosen on a non-racist basis, toured Australia. Roland Perry wrote the Bradman biography The Don and is the author of Bradman's Invincibles, to be published this month by Hachette Australia.

Bemused, acute, inquiring

MEREDITH BURGMANN





With my first letter from Don Bradman, I suppose I thought it normal for Australia's greatest cricketer to write to an unknown student demonstrator. He was Australian Cricket Board chairman and I was co-convenor of the Stop The Tours Campaign set up in 1969 to oppose all-white, racially selected South African sporting teams touring Australia. We targeted the 1971 Springboks rugby tour, but our ultimate goal was to stop the cricket tour that summer. We always knew cricket would be a sitting duck to our tactics of "non-violent direct action".

The first letter came midway through the Springboks tour. With three other people, including my sister, I'd run on to the Sydney Cricket Ground and stopped play. Because of my previous arrests and notoriety, I was reduced to disguising myself in an unbecoming red wig. I was sentenced to two months' jail, attracting international news coverage. Sir Donald sought my views. His letters reveal a man confronted with behaviour by young people he simply did not understand. But the letters also reveal an inquiring mind trying to come to terms with a difficult issue for many Australians. In October 1971, he wrote to me despairing that individual South African cricketers were being punished, even though they opposed segregation in sport. "I can't help thinking that a lot of the trouble is lack of dialogue; lack of understanding between people of divergent views simply because they won't talk to one another in a rational way," he wrote.

He included two clippings from what appears to be an airmail edition of The Times. One was about poor treatment of Russian dissidents and the other was critical of the Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda. His letters are strangely personal. I was entitled, he said, to disagree with his personal convictions, "but I am dedicated to see that cricket is not the victim of a political philosophy and, therefore, I would value your reaction to the points I have raised". His attitude to young people is evident: "When I was very young I did certain things which in the fullness of time I now see were unreasonable." But he finished the four-page letter, asking courteously for me to set down my philosophy so he had a "chance to evaluate it and a chance to comment".

I responded that our protests were not against sport and certainly not against cricket. I remained respectful but not overwhelmed. I pointed out that South African cricket was still imperfect, even though its authorities behaved better than those of most other sports there. And that non-racial sport was different from multiracial sport, where teams of one race played against teams of another. Sir Donald had problems with this distinction. His next letter was a corker. Handwritten on Bradman notepaper, its tone was impatient. "I'm wondering whether you have had time to consider my letter particularly in view of the news this week of the big multiracial athletics meeting in Johannesburg at which 19 nations competed." Towards the end of 1971, the ACB announced the cancellation in terms - "we will not play them until they choose a team on a non-racist basis" - we had not dared to hope for. I immediately wrote to congratulate him, and expected that would be the end of our correspondence.

But he wrote again in 1972. "Apparently you believe that protesters have a right to use violence, cause damage to property and even human life except in 'an ideal situation'. I could say to you, 'Thank heaven for the optimism of youth', or I could say 'Meredith - when will you grow up?' There can never be an ideal situation. What may be ideal for you won't be ideal for somebody else." His arguments show an acute mind. My university education, he said, had been "made possible because your forebears and mine plundered this country, murdered Aborigines etc etc and took over the land". Meredith Burgmann was NSW Legislative Council president from 1999 to 2007.