(From left) Hugh Jackman, Neil Harvey, Ricky Ponting and Sam Loxton at Sir Donald Bradman’s centenary dinner in Sydney on Wednesday. (Getty Images)

Flick back to the Adelaide Oval in 1989. There an enraged Patrick Patterson, pricked by a slogging from Australia’s tailenders, unloads his ire on a stooped old man. “You Don Bradman! I kill you, man, I bowl at you, I kill you. Split you in two.” Sir Donald, hand on hip, was dismissive of the big West Indian. “Mate, you couldn’t even get Merv Hughes out, you’d have no chance against me.”

Stories like that will come flooding back this week, retold by old men who played with or against Donald Bradman. It is a dwindling bunch of cricketing brothers much in demand on Wednesday – the occasion of Bradman’s centenary.

The reason is that no other cricketer will play as many as 52 Test matches and average 99.94. It is an unreachable bar. The hand closest to grabbing it belongs to Mike Hussey, but his fingers are clutching thin air with an average 31 runs lower and heading in the wrong direction. Bradman is untouchable.

“He was quick to pick up the ball, had fantastic footwork that got him in a position and wasn’t afraid to hit across the ball,” recalls teammate Neil Harvey.

“Remember, then our bats only weighed 2lb 2oz. If he used the ones they have these days he wouldn’t have averaged 99.94. He’d have averaged 199.94.”

Among the little red roofs and tiny houses of the up country New South Wales town of Bowral, the Bradman story is retold at a museum dedicated to his life.

It is just yards from the house where the boyhood Bradman famously honed his timing by hitting a golf ball against a water tank with a cricket stump. Just try it for a quick insight into an extraordinary talent.

Bradman died in February 2001, aged 92, a long innings for a man dogged with illness who endured tragedy and public scrutiny from the age of 19.

He lost his first-born son in infancy while his second, John, changed his name to Bradsen as his relationship with his father cooled.

Some felt he was aloof, snooty even. Others were too in awe of the Bradman legend to break down the barriers he erected.

One who did manage to was Sir Alec Bedser, a bowler he rated above all others.

The ‘Big Fella’ is now 90, but his pride at his record against Bradman has not dimmed with time. Bedser dismissed him eight times, the pick of them a leg cutter that bowled him for nought at Adelaide in 1946. It was, Bradman said, “the best ball ever bowled to me”.

“The main thing was to try to stop him scoring. The only way you could do that was bowl a good length and pretty straight,” Bedser says.

“He would always attack. You had to bowl straight and make sure the ball did something. I guessed it would be a long day if the ball didn’t do anything and Don was around.”

He was, of course, unnerved by Bodyline, a tactic born out of English frustration and unleashed during 1932-33, the only Ashes series Bradman lost. “He still averaged over 50, you know,” Bedser said.