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Australian cricket fans will get a rare opportunity to own a piece of history this week — but you’ll need plenty of spare cash to make it happen.
The first baggy green cap ever given to Sir Donald Bradman is being auctioned to help pay the debts of the man he gifted it to.
Bradman gave the cap from his debut Test series in 1928/29 to a family friend, Peter Dunham, in Adelaide in 1959.
The Dunhams were family friends of the legendary batsman and their house backed on to the Bradman family home on the Parade in Kensington Gardens.
Bradman’s cap has been on loan to the State Library of South Australia since 2003, when Dunham donated it, and has been authenticated.
Dunham, who grew up behind the Bradmans, had worn the cap while playing club cricket in South Australia.
In May this year, Dunham, an accountant, was jailed for eight years and two months for scamming $1.3 million from his investors after being found guilty of fraud.
Dunham’s estate was bankrupted, and Bradman’s cap will be sold on Thursday under instructions from Oracle Insolvency Services.
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Bradman was presented with the cap before Australia took on England at Brisbane’s Exhibition Ground in November 1928.
Modern players receive just one baggy green, but players from previous eras received more.
A number of Bradman‘s baggy green caps have previously been auctioned, with his 1948 edition from the famous Ashes tour of England selling for $425,000 in 2003.
Bradman‘s Test debut cap is listed under the Cultural Heritage Act and can’t be removed from Australia.
The record price for an Australian baggy green is Shane Warne‘s Test cap, which fetched $1,007,500 when purchased by the Commonwealth Bank in January as a fundraising exercise for bushfire relief.
That cap went on a national tour before becoming a permanent exhibit at the Bradman Museum in Bowral, NSW.
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