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Bradman’s War: How the 1948 Invincibles Turned the Cricket Pitch into a Battlefield by Malcolm Knox

by
December 2012–January 2013, no. 347

Bradman’s War: How the 1948 Invincibles Turned the Cricket Pitch into a Battlefield by Malcolm Knox

Viking, $39.99 hb, 447 pp,

Bradman’s War: How the 1948 Invincibles Turned the Cricket Pitch into a Battlefield by Malcolm Knox

by
December 2012–January 2013, no. 347

At last, new Bradman territory to be conquered: the Don 1939–45 or, if we discount the ‘phoney war’ (‘Business as Usual’, as Robert Menzies said of that first phase in World War II), perhaps 1941–45. I imagined a slim volume. Not so! Instead, there is a catch to the subtitle of Bradman’s War: How the 1948 Invincibles Turned the Cricket Pitch into a Battlefield, which indicates that we will be on more familiar terrain.‘More familiar’ because this book is an attempt at revisionist history. Questioning the Bradman idolatry and the invincibility of the Invincibles is a suitable aim. However, the main task for the revisionist historian is to provide either fresh new evidence or a powerful reinterpretation of existing evidence as part of formulating a balanced argument: Malcolm Knox does neither.

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