Allan Massie: A century on from his birth and Bradman remains way out in a class of his own

The bowler, Warwickshire's rotund wrist-spinner Eric Hollies, remarked wryly, "best ball I've bowled all summer and they're clapping him". No wonder: Don Bradman's last tour of England, as captain of perhaps the greatest of all Australian sides, had been a sort of royal progress. He might, in his 40th year, have been more fallible than in his heyday – R.C. Robertson-Glasgow wrote that he was now only "a very fine batsman", fine enough however to average 72 in that season's Tests – but the crowd that had stood to applaud him all the way to the wicket, and then, two balls later, all the way back to the pavilion may have sensed that his like would never be seen again. If so, they judged well.

His record speaks for itself. Twenty-nine centuries in 80 Test match innings with an average almost 30 runs higher than anyone who has played more than a handful of Tests. In all first-class cricket he made a hundred every third time he went to the wicket. Nobody has come close to matching that, and when his record of Test centuries was at last surpassed by Sunil Gavaskar, that very great batsman had played more than twice Bradman's number of innings. Nineteen of his Test centuries were made against England, with two scores of over 300 and six more over 200.

The statistics are formidable, but nothing shows Bradman's supremacy more clearly than that he is the only batsman ever to have inspired his opponents to devise a wholly new method to combat him: bodyline. It was successful; his average in the 1932-3 series was reduced to a mere 56. Bodyline was soon outlawed as being against the spirit of the game. In compensation, the lbw law was amended to give bowlers a better chance, all ultimately because of Bradman.

At Leeds in 1930 he scored 309 runs in a day. Even in these days of fast scoring, nobody may match that , if only because fewer overs are bowled in a day. But it points to one of his qualities. He wasn't simply an accumulator. Except on the rare occasion when he played a defensive innings to stave off defeat and secure a draw, he always set out to dominate the bowling. At Lord's in 1930 he came in to face the Somerset slow left-hander, J C White, who had tied the Australian batsmen down in the previous Ashes series, and, first ball, advanced down the wicket and hit him through mid-on for 4. Bradman thought that Lord's innings (254) the best he ever played. Every shot, he said, went just where he wanted it to.

In his early days there were criticisms of his technique. His grip was wrong, they said, (top wrist round behind the bat), and he picked his bat up over second slip. So he did, but he brought it down straight, and, as for the grip, it enabled him almost always to keep the ball down when cutting, hooking or pulling. His success was indeed based on a mastery of the fundamentals of batting. He saw the ball early, his footwork was quick, and he concentrated, concentrated, concentrated. More than any other batsman, except perhaps his West Indian contemporary George Headley, he obeyed Ranji's injunction; "play back or drive." Like most great batsmen, his first movement was back across the stumps. Neville Cardus once said he had never seen Bradman play an orthodox forward defensive stroke. That was probably a piece of typical Cardus exaggeration; nevertheless…

In his book What Sport Tells Us About Life the Middlesex and England batsman Ed Smith gave three reasons why there will never be another Don: "better defence, more information and a higher base of achievement."

Well, there never will be another Don, but I don't think his reasons answer. Taking them in reverse order, few would suggest that the present-day English attacks are better than those Bradman faced: fast bowlers like Larwood, Voce, Bowes and Farnes, fast-medium ones like Tate and Bedser, leg-spinners like Wright and Robins, and a slow left-hander, Hedley Verity, who makes Monty Panesar look like a novice.

Second, it's an insult to cricketers of the past to suggest that they didn't study the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents just as intelligently and thoroughly as cricketers today. There is some validity in the first point Smith makes. Out-fielding is certainly better and more athletic than it was in Bradman's day (though close catching isn't), and this might have meant that he would have had to score more slowly.

Yet I'm not sure. The Yorkshire and England fast bowler Bill Bowes who thought bowling at Bradman "the thrill of a lifetime" remarked that "he was so good he could hit you where he liked". Move a fielder to stop a shot and Bradman would put the ball where the man had been. He could, Bowes said, "hit an off-stump half-volley to any position in the field from third man to wide mid-on. The secret was his amazingly rapid foot positioning and split-second timing".

Throughout his career he bore the burden of being a national hero, the man who represented Australian identity in the depths of the Depression of the early Thirties. He aroused some jealousy among his team-mates, this reflecting the division in Australian society between those of an English, Protestant, royalist background (Bradman) and those with Irish, Catholic, republican roots. Two of the latter, Bill O'Reilly and Jack Fingleton, by then in the press box, almost fell off their seats in gleeful laughter when the Don made that duck at The Oval.

Nevertheless in his autobiography Bradman called O'Reilly the greatest bowler he had played with or against. Of all the tributes paid him, my favourite came from Doug Wright who bowled leg-breaks, top-spinners and googlies, brilliantly, if erratically, at medium pace for Kent and England.

He was a great if unlucky bowler, much admired by both Bradman and Walter Hammond. Colin Cowdrey once asked him what was the best over he ever bowled. He replied: "to the Don at Lord's. Every ball came out of my hand just as I wanted and pitched just where I wanted. I beat him twice. It went for 16."

The greatest of them all? Without a doubt.