BBC SPORT | Special Events | 2001 | Death of Don Bradman

Don Bradman was the most efficient, most relentless batsman cricket has ever seen.

Not the most dashing or flamboyant perhaps, but his sheer appetite for runs set him apart.

Although his total of 6,996 Test runs has been surpassed, it was the rate at which he scored them which was the true mark of his place in the game.

He scored a century or more every third time he batted.

In 52 Test matches, either side of the Second World War, he averaged 99.94 runs.

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It was no surprise then, when, in 2000, an international panel of 100 former cricketers and journalists unanimously voted him the greatest ever.

The former Australian batsman Jack Fingleton once quipped, "You didn't bat with Bradman, you ran for him."

Don Bradman was born in Cootamundra, in New South Wales, Australia, in 1908, the son of a carpenter.

He would practice batting with just a cricket stump.

At the age of 19, he became the youngest player to score a century in Test cricket in the Ashes against England.

In 1930, he made 452 not out for New South Wales against Queensland at Sydney, the highest score ever made in first-class cricket.

Bradman ducks a bouncer
England resorted to "bodyline" bowling to curb Bradman

Bradman made his first tour of England later that year, and in the Test matches he made 974 runs, an average of more than 139.

His innings of 334 against England at Headingley, at that time the highest individual score in Test cricket, was perhaps the most famous of his career.

Some 309 of his runs were scored in one day.

So feared was Bradman's batting that the English devised the controversial tactic of "bodyline" bowling on the tour of Australia in 1932.

Fast, short-pitched bowling from Harold Larwood and Bill Voce was aimed at the body, above all to restrict Bradman.

Though it worked to a degree, Bradman still managed to average more than 50 in that infamous series which, for a time, poisoned the relationship between the two countries.

Bradman bowled
Bowled for a duck in his last Test

During the war Bradman was invalided out of the Australian army, but by 1946 he was well enough to captain Australia in the first post-war Tests.

His fourth and last tour to England came in 1948 when he led Australia to an overwhelming victory.

By contrast, in his last Test innings, at The Oval, in which he needed just four runs to take his average to 100, he was bowled by Eric Holles for nought.

Bradman in later years
Bradman became a respected administrator in retirement

When he retired shortly afterwards, he had made more than 28,000 runs including 117 centuries.

He was awarded a knighthood in 1949 and he went on to become President of the South Australian Cricket Board and Chairman of Australia's selectors.

He also became a successful writer on cricket.

But it was his mastery of the art of batting which earned Sir Don Bradman his place in the game's history and his nickname - The Don.