And sadly runs "The Don": tragedy and the stuff of legends in "The Don's Last Innings".

Cricket is a game arousing fierce passions wherever it is seriously played, from England--its country of origin--to the Indian subcontinent where the sport has whipped up and sustained both communal and national fervor (Guha 1) to Australia, the land where, according to Adair, Nauright and Phillips, sport was the first form of foreign policy (51). It is a game interwoven into lore and steeped in cultural idiosyncrasies, legends and rituals so it is no surprise that the game has made its way into various fictitious writings in numerous forms, including several plays. (1)

Nor should it surprise that Don Bradman, indisputably the greatest batsman (2) to ever grace the game, should give his name to an Australian play by Tim Daly, The Don's Last Innings. This play was written in 1981, 33 years after Bradman had retired from Test cricket but while he was still alive. It was first performed in a fully staged and costumed reading in Adelaide the following year. Geoffrey Rush, later to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe and other awards for his acting in the film Shine, played the lead role, supported by Jacquy Phillips.

This article will discuss the play first in relation to several key points the playwright wanted to make about the risks and social costs of overindulgence in sporting fantasies and, secondly, in relation to the national obsession with "the Don" that serves as a backdrop to the play and the political opportunities that obsession has afforded in part. Interestingly, these two aspects, one personal and the other national, have important convergences that will also be discussed.

Daly's play hits several raw nerves about the balance between sport involvement at the spectator level and other areas of life that can suffer seriously, perhaps particularly in Australia where, it has been argued, sport is more revered than anywhere else (Stoddard 3). Daly claims this was no "accidental reflection on these things. I meant them deeply!" (3) He explains that he was stimulated to write the play

 from personal knowledge (in my family) of people who lived
 vicariously on sporting legends, to the great detriment of their
 own unique imaginations and even their relationships. It keeps even
 old men adolescent. Adolescents have a 'consoling fantasy' of
 omnipotence, and sport, for all its active pleasure (i.e. as a
 participant), has the capacity to make life-long escapists of us.
 (I mean more the watching of sport than its playing.)

With this in mind, Daly has written a black comedy with just two characters, John and his wife Marjorie, both tragic despite the comic content of much of the script, but it is John who is caught in the adolescent phase, escaping real life for his cricket fantasy. The play's central reference point is Bradman's last innings in which that cricketer was bowled by English spin bowler Eric Hollies and made a score of 0, known in cricket as a "duck." (4) The historical importance of this score was that for much of his career, Bradman had a batting average of over 100, a phenomenal average when one considers that it is more than half as much again as the next best average of a Test cricketer. It evoked some grief in Australians, then, that Bradman's average should drop to 99.94 as a result of this last innings, though it never appeared to worry Bradman. Indicative of the public sentiment regarding Bradman's last attendance at "the crease" is another piece of literature, a poem entitled "Bradman's Last Innings" in which the famous Australian poet John Foulcher addresses Bradman directly (57):

 four runs short of that century
 average, at the last, betrayed by your own game.

The national disappointment has become an obsession in the case of Daly's play's main character, John, but his illusion is equal to his obsession. John keeps trying to replay and thus erase the memory of Bradman's last innings by his own efforts to score these four runs retrospectively and thereby attain, on Bradman's behalf, the deserved Test batting average of 100. John's obsession is both complicated and sobering in its loop of entrapment and it has savaged Marjorie's chances for an identity and life of her own.

His entrapment is all the starker for the setting. John's cricket does not take place in his backyard--which would be quite normal, given a strong Australian tradition of backyard cricket. Rather John bats in his lounge room, thus confining both the set and the character's imagination simultaneously. The set calls for two lockers and a chest of drawers at the back of the stage along with a blackboard, and a tape recorder on which Bradman's last innings is repeatedly played, replete with commentary and crowd applause. There is a table and several chairs, one of which is constantly being placed on top of the table, forming an imaginary "pavilion" from which Marjorie must watch John play. But most important among the props is the strip of long narrow green carpet which John uses as his cricket pitch and a pedal bin at stage-right which he utilizes as stumps.

If the lounge room is John's cricket pitch and outer field, Marjorie is so much more, playing at different times umpire, scorer, bowler, twelfth man (5) and the entire contingent of spectators. She also constitutes his fan club and would by today's standards be in part his psychological trainer. It is clear that John sees her in the image of Jessie Bradman, Don's wife, though he expects Marjorie to take on many more roles than those of Jessie and he assumes that she would benefit from his play at cricket. Despite all Marjorie's chores, including preparing sandwiches and enough drinks for the whole team, hers is a largely passive role in contrast to John's active role. She experiences the worst but not the best of being a fan, defined by Guttman in his study of spectatorship as an "emotionally committed 'consumer' of sports events" (6). Certainly she is emotionally committed but she does not consume cricket; rather she is consumed by it. The phenomenon of Test cricketers' wives cheering on their husbands is gendered in two respects: submitting to the substantial demands of both marriage and cricket as institutions but also forming close bonds with other Test cricketers' wives who can themselves provide much empathy and support for those in the same situation. Chronicling the joys and pains of Test cricketers' wives, Christine Hogan noted the intense camaraderie they formed amongst themselves (9). Marjorie completely misses out on any such companionship and solidarity.

Further, her experience runs counter to that of cricket spectators even in the early period of modern sports spectatorship where Guttman says of cricket crowds (79):

 what better way to symbolize community than to have everyone
 assemble, not by external coercion but because it was, after all,
 the thing to do?

 Arguably, there is something closer to coercion in Marjorie's
 long-suffering spectatorship. Furthermore, the sense of community
 is missing. Marjorie refers to her ex-friends, for example, having
 had to forsake these friends to be a cricketer's wife.

There are two major components of John's illusion. First, he has deluded himself that he is in fact Bradman and he even takes on--in a somewhat exaggerated style--several of Bradman's attributes such as non-sociability. Bradman's tensions with the champion leg-spin bowler Clarrie Grimmett come up repeatedly as John lives out his dislike of bowlers generally but Grimmett in particular. Indeed, he brings up Grimmett's name at least eight times, usually disparagingly, referring to the spin bowler as being full of hot air, for instance (141).

John also insists that Marjorie call him Don and that she play along with his illusion. The depth of his insistence is revealed when oblique banter about their sexual activities the previous night, which the audience fears may yet turn out to be more about cricket than actual sex, comes to an abrupt halt with Marjorie accidentally calling John by his real name instead of Don (117).

MARJORIE: You were very rough.

JOHN: That's how you like it, isn't it. [Pause.] Not bad for my age, am I? What do you say, eh?

[Marjorie is trying not to smile. He laughs.]

Eh? What do you say?

MARJORIE: Now stop it.

JOHN: What do you say? Not bad at all, that's what.

[Striding up and down the pitch] The old Don. He's good with his bat, eh?

MARJORIE: [laughing quietly] Don't you be so silly!

JOHN: Especially on a sticky wicket!

MARJORIE: [teased] You're a wicked man, John Brown.

[She instantly realizes her error, and is both horrified and apologetic, John freezes.]

I mean, Don, er, sorry. It was an accident. [Laughing nervously] I'm getting old and forgetful. I meant to say Don.

The second component of John's illusion is that, as he plays out his cricket day after day and night after night, he believes he can change history if he can just get four runs. Thus his life has turned into a recurring replay of the famous 1948 match but just as he is trapped in the illusion, his batting appears trapped in the reality of the result. Despite his best efforts, time and again he is bowled by Hollies and scores 0. In frustration, most likely with her own entrapment in the illusion, Marjorie tells him at one point he will never get the four runs needed: "Hollies was too good for you" (116).

As Daly says "The man in my play--like many regular fans, of people whose only of dominant activity is sport watching--becomes a trapped victim of legend-making, and fills his imagination with sport." Sadder still is that Marjory has given up her life to support John in his fantasy, at times somewhat begrudgingly but occasionally with almost cheerful resignation.

The folly and sadness of their situation is epitomized not far into the script when Marjorie recalls that the neighbors who once visited never returned after they were recruited by John as umpires in a lounge room cricket match (121).

MARJORIE: I asked them to [visit again] ... But they wouldn't. And we haven't seen them since.

[Pause.] We haven't seen anyone since you became a cricketer.

JOHN: I wish they had've come back. I could have used them as a couple of regular fielders.

MARJORIE: [brightening] I don't think so. He made some rather unkind comments about you using the living room as a practice pitch.

JOHN: [looking around] What--this? What did he say?

MARJORIE: He said ... something very strange ... and just after I'd lent her some sugar. He said there are no people in Don's world. Only legends.

Marjorie's support for her husband is here apparent but comes on the back of initial tensions after John rises early in the morning while she is still asleep, to play yet another game of cricket despite having promised that he has played his last innings (116).

MARJORIE: You said it was your last innings!

JOHN: I know. I just need four more runs.

MARJORIE: You said you'd hang up your gloves.

JOHN: Four more runs--then I retire.

MARJORIE: You promised!

By the end of the play, the audience is aware that this is a regular promise and that, although the indignant Marjorie seems surprised and hurt that he has broken his promise, it appears to be all part of a routine where each day brings the same outcomes. Each negotiation is merely part of that routine, not a genuine attempt at resolution, for John appears incapable of that. Marjorie knows this too, yet lives with sparks of hope to the contrary, evident in the last scene (144).

JOHN: ... But there's an end to everything. After tonight, there'll be a whole lifetime of retirement to look forward to.

MARJORIE: If I do play, will you ... will you retire?

JOHN: You bet your life I will.

[MARJORIE is about to smile when JOHN speaks again.]

I need four more runs. Nothing simpler.

[Her smile vanishes. JOHN paces up and down.]

Now I'm going to be careful. I know there's a special second ball they'll throw at me ....

Thus the audience is not looking at an extraordinary event in the lives of John and Marjorie but rather at what happens repeatedly in their lives. While clearly hyperbolic, Daly's point about how sport can affect relationships is borne out strongly, John displaying precisely the adolescence Daly laments. John hides behind the persona of Bradman rather than develop his own personality and forge a more meaningful relationship with the devoted Marjorie. Indeed, he may be losing his wicket to Hollies' second delivery as a subconscious tribute to "the Don" and because he fears the maturation that "retirement" from cricket might demand.

Meanwhile Marjorie oscillates between a futile insistence for change and a desperate clinging to anything that will maintain a relationship that is now absurdly built around a recurring cricket match, a relationship excruciatingly hollow for her. At one point after John has curtly told her she talks too much and is an impediment to his goals, she goes from indignantly seeking an apology to pathetically delivering one (132) as she does not want to admit to herself that John is neither sorry for his words nor capable of reflecting on how they have hurt her.

The nature of their relationship is effectively revealed in the ways in which their conversations often run parallel but have few points at which they connect. For instance, following a discussion of how Bradman's nemesis Clarrie Grimmett used to drink a great deal of tea, they go off on their separate thoughts (119):

MARJORIE: I've never drunk twenty cups of tea in one day.

JOHN: Larwood was a better bowler than Grimmett.

MARJORIE: Once I had nineteen though.

JOHN: Though I'm biased. Clarrie and I didn't really get on.

MARJORIE: I counted them. I was waiting for you to stop practicing.

JOHN: I think it was because we played for the same State side. I always kept him out of the limelight.

MARJORIE: [Looking directly at him] Do you think I got poisoned?

[Pause]

JOHN: What?

MARJORIE: From nineteen cups. Do you think I got poisoned?

JOHN: How long ago was it?

MARJORIE: In nineteen forty-eight.

JOHN: [not sarcastically] No. I think the poison would have shown before now.

Marjorie has a range of defenses for coping with her husband's virtual non-existence in their marriage and, worse, his insistence that she be a part of his fantasy. At times she confronts him and tells him the cricket must stop but this proves futile. On another occasion it appears she may even be sabotaging the pitch. On yet another she exacts revenge and vents frustration by throwing balls at John as forcefully as she can, aiming them at his head and sending them down thick and fast, and even telling him all the while that she hates him, but he only corrects her technique, pointing out that, for historical accuracy and to give him the best chance of achieving an average of 100, she needs to bowl differently: "Bowl properly! You're ruining it! Bowl properly!" and "That's not the ball! Stop!" (145).

Sadly, and despite Marjorie's frustration, this is as close as she ever gets to having some power and deriving some satisfaction. The playwright notes in the script that "the exchange between characters and bat and ball" even "takes on the form of an aggressive sexual act, with ever-louder grunting and groaning" and John demanding "More rhythm! More movement!" (145).

As her most prominent way of coping, Marjorie embraces her own fantasies, not those of John. She deludes herself that they may be able to build a normal life, imagining, for instance, that they may indulge in the accoutrements and pretence of having children, a fantasy no more bizarre than John's. Thus she recalls the wall that was knocked down so that two rooms could provide an adequate length for a cricket pitch (133).

MARJORIE: I was wondering what we might have used it for, if you hadn't taken up cricket.

JOHN: I don't know.

MARJORIE: [Not maliciously, but in a matter-of-fact tone] It could have been a study. Or a sunroom. Of a dining room for guests. We would have had more guests if you weren't a cricketer.

[John tries to resume batting, but soon stops to hear her out.]

It could have been a baby's room. If we'd had a baby. That's what I've been knitting. Baby boots. When you retire, I thought we might turn this into a baby and toy room. Just for fun. I saw it in a magazine. We'll have to sit down and work out everything, get quotes and things.

JOHN: Marjorie ...

[Marjorie takes the chair down and sits at the table.]

MARJORIE: It may be too expensive. But it would be so lovely to look at.

JOHN: Marjorie ...

[He finally has her smiling attention. For a moment he is too amazed to speak.]

You're losing your grip on reality. We're too old for children. I'm too old for Test cricket. That's why I'm retiring. Get a hold on yourself, woman.

The irony of John, who believes he is Don Bradman and that he can simply keep replaying his innings until he "gets it right," telling Marjorie to get a grip on reality is one of the most successful pieces of humor in this sad yet funny dialogue and drives home that Marjorie's building of fantasies are the only way that she has been able to deal with John's.

The role of Marjorie bears some semblance to that of Linda in Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller's classic play about a family tragedy. Her loyalty and support for John echoes the support Linda extends Willy. Elaine Aston's reference to Linda's "subordinate position within the heterosexual economy and the sadistic narrative frame which denies her access to her own story" (43-44) is applicable also to Marjorie. Of course, this is not to suggest the playwright's approval. On the contrary, in The Don's Last Innings a beam of scrutiny is held on the inequities in John and Marjorie's relationship. Whereas the audience can easily regard John as a "lost cause," the character of Marjorie is more complex because it vacillates between willingness and ineffectual resistance. It is a stunning critique of patriarchy and juxtaposes the deference of women to men in 1948, the year of the time warp in which they are stuck, with the audience's knowledge of feminism's gains by the 1980s. What the audience knows, Marjorie can only sense.

She reads magazines and is aware of change without having the social tools and context through which to interpret these changes. Thus her suggestions for change are interwoven with what she knows of the past and with the often contradictory expression of her need for more than JOHN can offer (127):

MARJORIE: I can always take a course in something. That's very fashionable nowadays. Or I might go back to the bank. Do you think that would be a good idea? That's where we met, didn't we. I was working there, then you came, and before you knew it we were married. Didn't know what hit us. I was a good typist, though. That's my only regret, giving it up to stay at home and umpire for you. Umpiring is a rewarding profession, but it's so time-consuming. It's very hard to be a full-time wife and an umpire at the same time, even if your husband is understanding.

And later (128):

JOHN: ... I was nothing before I took up cricket.

MARJORIE: I still am.

JOHN: Am what?

MARJORIE: Nothing.

JOHN: You are not. You are my wife. Now go and make lunch for us.

For John, Marjorie's duties are clear-cut and of a domestic nature. Shona Thompson, following research into how women facilitate and service their families' participation in sport and also buttress sporting institutions, claims that this servicing is often contained "within the boundaries of domestic responsibilities" and can thus be easily hidden (228). Marjorie's cricketing responsibilities have become part of her domestic package and her ability to meet these satisfactorily form part of her identity and give rise to affirmation that, in general, she is a "good wife." Just as Willy Loman refers to Linda as his foundation and support (13) and tells her "You're the best there is, Linda, you're a pal" (29), John less demonstrably concedes to Marjorie "you're a good woman" (118). However, the disturbingly narrow framework John allows for the expression of Marjorie's value is soon revealed by his claim that "No one makes orange cordial like you, Marjorie" (127).

The constraints on both Marjorie and Linda stem largely from the rather different sets of expectations on each of their husbands. Whereas Willy feels weighted by the expectations of a society which purports to offer him so much but in reality delivers to him few opportunities for meeting those expectations, John, even while curtailing his own life chances, feels the weight of expectations arising from the legendary nature of Bradman (118):

JOHN: It's not easy carrying the hopes of a nation on your shoulders.

MARJORIE: I'll help you, Don.

JOHN: Children look up to me. I've got a big responsibility.

MARJORIE: You do a marvelous job ...

JOHN: Next they'll be asking me to walk on water. I can't do everything. I'm not a miracle worker. I'm an ordinary human being.

The weight of the expectations is exacerbated by John's withdrawal from society and Marjorie's rather more reluctant reclusiveness. That John and Marjorie constitute the only characters in the play is pivotal to The Don's Last Innings, making their isolation and disturbing relationship a strong focus, compounded by a dialogue fraught initially with tension but later also gendered layers of interdependence. While there are numerous references to other characters, these are nearly all cricket heroes, emphasizing Daly's point that they have forsaken relationships for legends, rendering the duo a lonely couple with no apparent relationship to reality. They are placed squarely in the realms of the past, giving rise to Marjorie's worries about the future. She is concerned that, since they have done nothing except play cricket for over 30 years, even an escape might bring problems. She thinks they need to have plans to replace cricket with other activities. John, firmly entrenched in 1948, paradoxically advises Marjorie that they should worry only about the present and "let the future look after itself" (127).

It is this denial of what year it is and what has changed that raises questions and issues for Australia as a nation. The questions relate to but extend beyond the issue of the country's obsession with sport and sporting heroes so evident in The Don's Last Innings. They also point to the ways in which legends can be used uncritically to sustain national ideologies and to quell criticism of policies and political directions.

From 1996 to 2007, Australia was under the Prime Ministership of John Howard, a self-confessed "cricket tragic" whose admiration for Don Bradman and whose interest in the Australian cricket team were such that politics and sport became more entangled than is usually the case. Brett Hutchins, who undertook doctoral research into the mythology surrounding Bradman and authored a book on the topic, elsewhere claims that cricket "as a cultural form [has been] used to reinforce a social-conservative tradition in Australia" and that Howard was able to "incorporate [Bradman's] heroism into a social-conservative cultural and political vision" (57) which he held for Australia and was to implement over the course of his rule.

Certainly the way that John Brown treats Marjorie resonates with Howard's policies and attitudes towards women, which at times hinted and at other times bellowed that women should play strong domestic roles, reminiscent of the firm family-supporting role they played during the late 1940s and 1950s, a time viewed with great nostalgia by Howard. Just as Howard rejected a "women's agenda," John Brown will not listen to Marjorie's statement of needs nor to her suggestions for a life after cricket. Howard's stubbornness and inability to listen and develop meaningful relationships, especially with indigenous Australians, became a major stumbling block for his government and for the nation's progress in the same way that John Brown has become trapped in his mindset that all he needs is four runs, oblivious of the deterioration of relationships around him. Both Howard and Brown resorted to the legend of Bradman--and in the case of Howard, other Australian icons such as the Australian flag and ANZAC legends--to create a barricade around a set of beliefs horrendously in need of critique. That barricade will not easily be felled. A question about Bradman forms part of a citizenship test for hopeful Australian immigrants instigated by the Howard government. The subsequent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, mindful of the strength of the Bradman legend, has supported the test and the inclusion of the Bradman question (Coorey).

Another of Daly's aims in writing the play was to probe how legend may differ from mythology and what a paucity Australia may have by simply resorting to sporting legends rather than a fuller array of meaningful narratives from which morals can be drawn. He claims that "the way that sport turns myth into simple legend" is a problem "on a personal and national scale .... 'legend' is the stuff of simplicity." The legend confuses Bradman the cricketer with Bradman the person and there has been a tendency to lionize both his cricketing and personal attributes, as well as a reluctance to criticize him on any grounds. This is a risky sullying of the boundaries between sport and other areas of life and a hazard John Brown might well have heeded.

Although Bradman stressed that sport and politics should be kept separate, he gave ongoing if indirect sustenance to conservative politics. It is widely recognized that Bradman tended towards social conservatism and it is even claimed that his batting and captaincy were indicative of his ideologies and attitudes towards capitalist production in that he exhibited a new emphasis on accumulation not evident in the batting of his often more flamboyant predecessors. Harriss (184-186) suggests Bradman batted in a less risky style than, say, Victor Trumper who once ran a batting partner out because he considered it greedy for him to keep accumulating runs after he had amassed 219.

Of course, political use could not have been made of Bradman had he not already had legendary status and had there not already been a national obsession with him, though the political and ideological use of him adds to, rather than challenges, such an obsession. Bradman's remarkable batting skills only partially explain his exaltation. The historical timing of his feats and the nature of the relationship between Australia and England gives contextual backdrop to the need for an antipodean legend. Bradman's period of Test cricket overlapped with both the Great Depression, from which Australia, due to its heavy reliance on primary exports, felt greater affects than almost any other country, and with the years before and after World War II. Sissons and Stoddart are among those who claim that cricket offered some psychological comfort to Australians during the harsh days of economic depression and Bradman made it a worthwhile distraction.

Almost from the start, there was a fiercely competitive edge to cricket played between Australia and England but this was heightened by the considerable advantage Bradman brought to the Australian team and by the tactics instigated by England in an attempt to counter that advantage. Bowling in a way in which it would be difficult for the Australians to score runs and where they would have to defend their bodies more than their wicket to avoid being hit by the fast balls, English fielders were set heavily on legside to take catches from the fending bat. Whereas the English cricketing authorities called this leg theory, Australians called it Bodyline and claimed it was outside of the spirit, though not the rules, of cricket. Australian cricket followers saw it as an attempt to render Bradman ineffective--and certainly the strategy did see his runs diminish over this period--but also as an attempt to harm Bradman and other Australian Test cricketers. This interpretation was given credence by the number of Australian batsmen receiving blows to the body. These included Bradman but more notably opening batsman Bill Woodfull, who took numerous body blows and Bert Oldfield who sustained a lineal fracture to his right frontal bone after being struck in the head by a fast ball (Docker 110-112). The ensuing animosity and the intensity with which the 1932-33 Test series was contested, with Bradman still scoring a batting average of 56.57 for the series, helped elevate Bradman as a hero and legend and added substantially to the cricket narrative in which Bradman plays such a key role.

Test cricket was suspended during World War II and Bradman entered the Royal Australian Air Force, later transferring to the army, but hopes of seeing Bradman bat again sustained many Australians during the period of the war, just as his batting had shone like a beacon--and a nationally unifying beacon--through the otherwise deep gloom of the Great Depression. Despite the temptation to "pull stumps," following the war Bradman decided to resume batting at Test level to help Australia recover "from the ravages of war" (Haigh 112).

Thus the pressures of war and economic depression, along with the social blights they brought, fostered a grabbing at pleasurable distractions and the lack of critique that allowed these distractions to go unchecked. Within the Bodyline narrative and the cricketing vacuum that war brought shortly after, the hopes and heroism with which Bradman became connected allowed him to become more than a cricketing hero but also the hope and savior of the nation.

In many respects, then, Bradman was not just a phenomenal batsman but also an antidote. In the darkest of times Australia used the Bradman legend as an escape and John Brown seems to have unwittingly done the same. Perhaps not so unwittingly, John Howard did the same again, pushing Australia back into a time warp of around the same period in which John Brown is stuck, and all the time using legends such as that of Bradman as a glossy and jingoistic cover for his actions. It seems reasonable to conclude then that the immaturity, delusions and other failings of the main character in The Don's Last Innings might be found at a national level in Australia's recent history as well as at an individual level and it behoves us to think about the role of sport in facilitating such problematic behavior.

Daly's play succeeds in a number of areas, not least providing a bridge of discourse connecting national and individual problems. The play is all the more extraordinary because it was written before John Howard became Prime Minister, a testament to the playwright's ability to discern problems before they are necessarily evident on a national scale. Looking at Howard's legacy of reversal of social change and of his nostalgia for a period overlapping with the period from which John Brown cannot disengage, one cannot help but wish Howard had been amongst the audience when the play was read in Adelaide in 1982. But would he have recognized aspects of himself in John and taken the opportunity to redress these shortcomings? Judging on what transpired under his Prime Ministership and the relationships in tatters as a result of his hell-bent retreat to the early post-war period, probably not!

Works Cited

Adair, Daryl, John Nauright and Murray Phillips. "Playing fields through to battle fields: the development of Australian sporting manhood in its imperial context, c. 1850-1918," Journal of Australian Studies, no. 56, March 1998, 51-67.

Aston, Elaine. An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre. London: Routledge, 1995.

Correy, Phillip. "Citizenship Test: Bradman not out," Sydney Morning Herald, January 30, 2008.

Daly, Timothy. "The Don's Last Innings" in Ron Blair (ed.), Popular Short Plays for the Australian Stage, vol. 1. Sydney: Currency Press, 1985.

Docker, E.W. Bradman and the Bodyline. London: Angus & Robertson, 1978.

Guha, Ramachandra. "Cricket and Politics in Colonial India," Past & Present, November 1998.

Guttmann, Allen. Sports Spectators. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

Haigh, Gideon. The Cricket War. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1993.

Harriss, Ian. "Cricket and Bourgeois Ideology" in Geoffrey Lawrence and David Rowe (eds), Power Play: commercialisation of Australian sport. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1986.

Hogan, Christine. "Cricketers' Wives," Sunday Life!, supplement to Sun-Herald, Sydney, 19 March, 2000, 7-9.

Hutchins, Brett. "Social Conservatism, Australian Politics and Cricket: The triumvirate of Prime Minister John Howard, Sir Robert Menzies and Sir Donald Bradman," Journal of Australian Studies, March 2001.

Hutchins, Brett. Don Bradman: challenging the myth. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. London: Penguin, 1949.

Sissons, Ric and Brian Stoddart. Cricket and Empire: the 1932-33 Bodyline tour of Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1984.

Spurr, Barry. The Poetry of John Foulcher. Glebe, NSW: Pascal, undated.

Stoddart, Brian. Saturday Afternoon Fever: sport in the Australian culture. North Ryde: Angus & Robertson, 1986.

Thompson, Sona. Mother's Taxi: Sport and Women's Labor. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999.

Notes

(1.) For instance, comedian Alan Ayckbourn has set some of his works around a game of garden cricket.

(2.) I use the word "batsman" intentionally here. While women play cricket avidly in the same countries men do, they do not enjoy the same resources and level of support. Therefore it is impossible to compare their accomplishments with those of their male counterparts.

(3.) This and other quotations from the playwright, Timothy Daly, are from email discussions I had with him in May and June 2007. I am grateful for his generous assistance.

(4.) Although he denied it, the mythology surrounding Bradman insists that he was out for a duck because his eyes were full of tears at playing his last innings.

(5.) The Twelfth Man in cricket is a reserve who can field in place of an injured player but may not bat or bowl. His main role is to bring out drinks and equipment (and sometimes covert messages) to the rest of the team.

Article Details

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Author:	Varney, Wendy
Publication:	Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature
Article Type:	Critical essay
Geographic Code:	8AUST
Date:	Mar 22, 2008
Words:	5676
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