A cap worn by Australian cricket legend Don Bradman fetched a staggering 479,700 Australian dollars (Rs 2.63 crore) at an auction in Sydney on Tuesday. Bradman wore the cap – known as a ‘baggy green’ – during India’s 1947-48 tour of Australia, when he scored his 100th first-class century.
Auction house Bonhams described the cap, external as “sun faded and worn”, with “some insect damage” and “some loss to (the) edge of (the) peak”.
The cap, a rare piece of cricketing history, was bought for 390,000 Australian dollars (Rs 2.14 crore) before the addition of a buyer’s premium was added to the fee.
Bradman, who died aged 92 in 2001, is widely regarded as cricket’s greatest-ever batter and averaged 99.94 across his 52-match Test career. The 1947-48 series against India was his last on home soil and he scored 715 runs in six innings at an average of 178.75 – with three centuries and a double-hundred – as Australia won 4-0.
Following the 1947-48 series, which was also India’s first international cricket tour as an independent country, Bradman gave the cap to the Indian team tour manager, Pankaj Gupta, who passed it on to the Indian team’s wicket keeper PK Sen.
Bradman’s cap had been on loan since 2010 to the Bradman Museum in the player’s hometown of Bowral. It was purchased by the current owner in 2003, auction house Bonhams said.
The Australian cricket legend Bradman played his last Test against England in 1948 at the Oval and needed to score only four runs in his final innings to finish with a career average of 100. However, he was dismissed for a two-ball duck and missed out on the mark.
