The Don’s son hated media attention

Adelaide, Australia March1: Bradman held a media conference at Adelaide Oval, aptly in the Bradman Room which features an oil painting and a bronze sculpture of his father, who died last Sunday.

With his children Greta, 21, and Tom, 20, flanking him, Bradman told of his "warm and close" relationship with his father, rated the world's greatest cricketer.

As a five-year-old, John Bradman hid behind cricket changing rooms to avoid the media spotlight.

"I remember when I was five hiding behind a changing shed, trying to get away from the press," Bradman said Wednesday.

The young boy only wanted to play a game of cricket but things were rarely so simple for the son of Sir Donald Bradman.

"These things have a big impact but ... I'm not poisoned by life, by those early experiences."

John Bradman said he recognised the irony: his early years were spent eluding the media and hating its attention; on Wednesday he was thanking it for "very sensitive and considerate" coverage of his father's death.

"I'm here doing this sort of thing essentially for him in the same sort of ways that he did things for me," he said.

Bradman said his father's fame, that subsequently reflected onto him, was difficult to deal with.

While always proud of his father, Bradman changed his surname to Bradsen in the 1970s in a bid to shun the spotlight cast by his famous surname.

Now, he says he is "undoubtedly" proud to have reverted to the surname Bradman.

"The person who undoubtedly best understood it and most supported me was my dad," Bradman said of the surname change. "Fame has a huge impact on anybody and then it's a question of how you deal with it."

Asked how he coped, Bradman said: "I survived and I still enjoy life.

"Of course it has its downside ... it does have a very big impact on one's life and it had a huge impact on mine."

Bradman recalled playing backyard cricket with his father during his childhood.

Asked if he ever dismissed his father, Bradman replied: "Of course. There is actually a public witness to the occasion. I was playing with him in a father-and-son match at school and people were very cross with me because I got him out. If it were deliberate on his part it was one of the best shots he ever played."