Captain Bradman ‘resented’ by team-mates

Don Bradman’s leadership qualities were not universally admired by his team-mates. The new book Inside Story: Unlocking Australian Cricket's Archives, which has an extract in the Herald Sun, reveals complaints about Bradman’s rise to the captaincy after he took over from Vic Richardson.

Bradman said that Richardson "resented that like nobody's business", and also that a clique in the Australian team based around its "strong Catholic element" resented his appointment as Australian captain on November 30, 1936, favouring their co-religionist Stan McCabe.

Bradman disavowed any sectarian biases, saying that he "didn't care two hoots whether a man was a Catholic or a Mason", and denied being behind the complaint that led to Catholics McCabe, O'Reilly, Leo O'Brien and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith being arraigned before the board on vague charges of undermining their captain and being unfit.

He did, however, concede: "I don't think there is any doubt at all that there was a group of people, O'Reilly was one and Fingleton would have been one for certain, who wanted Stan McCabe to be captain instead of me.

From one Australian leader to another, Ricky Ponting writes in his column in the Australian about the team’s novel situation of playing against world champions. “I can't remember being in it since Sri Lanka won the one-day international crown in 1996.”