Frank was a cricket enthusiast and I don’t think there was anything he did not know about cricket. Unfortunately I could never get “the hang of cricket”, although I tried. When Frank said: “can you see the elegant way the player throws the ball, the way he stands etc.?” I just could see a bloke throwing it and another one hitting it. I just didn’t see it. Erika

 

How did cricket become my religion? (As told to Erika)

 

Once I had abandoned Christianity and other forms of religion, I realised that the only philosophy that satisfied me was the ethics of cricket – sportsmanship, in other words. Plus the elegance, grace, subtlety and brute strength.

 

I thought I had better devise my own form of cricket religion, so I conferred sainthood's on batsmen who scored centuries and bowlers who took five wickets or did the hat-trick, and other cricketers who did remarkable things.

 

The next logical step was to devise some sort of voodoo, like the way Catholics cross themselves and say: “Father, son and holy ghost”, so I cross myself and say “Batsman, bowler and holy turf”.

 

Bradman was not only the world’s greatest batsman ever, but also a perfect sportsman, so I suppose you could say he is the equivalent of a god.

 

When I was about 13, I sent to Radio 2UE a question for Don Bradman to answer in his weekly session. My question was: “When you went for the catch that dismissed Hammond in the Second Test, did you think you had any chance of making it?” It had been a spectacular catch, with Bradman running flat out underneath while the ball spiraled around in the breeze, but he made it and took the catch at arm’s length.

 

Bradman said: “Now I have a question from Mr Frank Walker” and read out my question. I was so flabbergasted at being called Mister by anybody, but to be called Mister for the first time in my life by none other than Bradman was overwhelming and I have never forgotten it. His answer was that when you go for a catch you hope that somehow or other the ball will hang up in the air long enough for you to get there. I tried it but dropped just about every catch that went near me.

 

My father attached great importance to Latin, as an exercise in intellectual analysis, and one day he called me very sternly into his study, where he had my school report in his hand. He said I had done appallingly at Latin, and for that I had to be punished.

 

This alarmed me, because he was the gentlest soul and I had always got away with the most dreadful deeds without any mention of punishment. He then took from his pocket two tickets, and said: “Your punishment is to come with me to the Sydney Cricket Ground tomorrow and watch Sutcliffe bat”.

 

Next day we sat in the stand with him saying things such as: “Look at that, Frank. Sutcliffe just pushed it back to the bowler when he should have driven it through the covers for four.” To him, an incorrect cricket stroke was as distasteful as discordant music.

 

He was lavish in his praise of elegant batting and I remember him saying, as we watched the swashbuckling Stan McCabe :”He has the grace of Nijinsky and the passion of Chopin”.

 

This was the body-line series of 1932-3 and he was so incensed at the unsportsmanlike approach of the English team that he solemnly announced at dinner one night:”From now on I am not an Englishman – I am an Australian”.

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