In 1934, Don Bradman moved to Adelaide from New South Wales.

He was the South Australian Cricket Association’s biggest catch, joining Harry Hodgett’s stockbroking firm on a six year contract. He spent the next 65 years in Adelaide, raising his family in Holden Street, Kensington Park, with his wife Jessie who died before he did, in 1997.

However, on this day in Yorkshire 90 years ago, with the bitter taste of the previous “Bodyline” series in Australia still fresh, the weight of national expectations was again resting in Bradman’s hands. He had not batted well in the first three Tests of that year’s Ashes series. Bradman had been ill and his teammates and fellow Australians were worried that he had lost both his mojo and his magic.

Very soon after he strode out to bat in the Fourth Test at Headingley, the shout of “He’s back” echoed from the players’ dressing room to countless families listening on radios back home. Bradman kept going, making an extraordinary 304 runs. Added to his previous total at Headingley four years before, this meant he had scored 684 runs in consecutive innings at the Leeds ground.

In these days of celebrity culture where the loose use of words “great”, “star”, “icon” and “legend” have lost much of their currency, it is useful to put into perspective what Bradman’s superiority would mean today.

Despite all the improvements in equipment, amenities and technology, Bradman remains almost 40% better than the next best batsman international cricket has so far produced.

If you transpose that superiority to other sports, then in the marathon it would equate to a difference of almost 50 minutes between winner and runner up. Staggeringly, it would also mean almost two and a half metres in extra height over the pole vault bar compared to whoever came second.

However, Bradman’s enduring legacy is not just about statistics, or the memory of a supremacy in sport unlikely to be surpassed.

Bradman was our nation’s shining light during the grimmest days the Great Depression, particularly for those whose destinies were dimming. He seemed to be proof that an attitude of dogged valour, stoic tenacity and of playing every ball on its merits, would see Australians through to better times.

His almost dour demeanour and lack of flamboyance seemed in those different times to appeal to all Australians regardless of background or circumstance, whether they were from city, country or outback. Bradman was there just at the right time to remind Australians of the greatness that might just gleam in every Aussie kid if they tried hard enough, however humble their family home or obscure their path to the batting crease.

His errors were so few that a simple newspaper headline “He’s Out” would tell an anguished England that their torment had been temporarily relieved.

Bradman’s achievements also showed a young nation, so recently tested by sacrifice at Gallipoli and on the Somme, that Australia could now stand tall in any arena.

Another World War took from us key years of Bradman at his peak that might have revealed an even greater mastery, as hard as that is to imagine. Yet, despite the toll of serious illness and age, he eventually returned to England and bowed out as an “Invincible”.

There is no doubt that Bradman was the most famous Australian of the Twentieth Century, a national talisman, the taciturn symbol of an unpretentious country that was sometimes lucky and good at sport.

Bradman had his critics, including other Test cricketers, during and long after his playing days. He could be difficult, even prickly. South Australia’s other “Don”, Don Dunstan, wasn’t an admirer, believing he was “too right wing” and never considered recommending Bradman for the governorship some believed he deserved.

Even during our negotiations to upgrade the Adelaide Oval I heard of feuds and the bitter, decades long cold war between SACA’s Bradman and SANFL giant Max Basheer.

Don Bradman remained a powerful figure in cricket for decades after his last Test, particularly as an administrator and for more than thirty years as an Australian selector.

Bradman was doggedly inaccessible to those who wanted to exploit him and would not give the media the instant commentary it craved. Instead, he lived simply, playing golf with friends, playing Chopin on his piano, and keeping his counsel with a privacy many resented.

The way he led his life contributed to the strength of his legend. It was about the power of simplicity, about staying true to yourself and your calling. It was also about grace and a gritty resilience under pressure.

Bradman’s legacy was also, and hopefully still is, about values. He believed that those who wore the “baggy green” were custodians of an ideal to pass on to the next generation of cricketers.

No one would have dared ask Bradman to throw a match or sanction ball tampering. Nor was he ever involved in boozy, post match hi-jinks. No one, not even his detractors, ever doubted Bradman’s patriotism, or that he was there to win for his team and his country.

I didn’t know Bradman and only met him once, when I worked for John Bannon, perhaps our most cricket-savvy Premier, who later became a board member of Cricket Australia.

Moving overseas meant I never got to see and hear the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s 2014 “Our Don” written by Natalie Williams. I’m told it was brilliant.

However, in 2013 at Lord’s, the second best cricket ground in the world, I spoke at the reception celebrating the exhibition of Adelaide’s ‘Bradman Collection’. Don Bradman’s son John was with us, so was John and Angela Bannon, while Bradman’s talented granddaughter Greta sang for us beautifully.

A few days later, also at Lord’s, another Aussie great, Shane Warne, was inducted into the ICC’s Cricket Hall of Fame. On the surface there could be no more different bookends of a century of Australian cricket than Bradman and Warne.

They were so different in personality, style and temperament. But like Bradman, Warne was unmistakably Australian-with his zinc creamed face, larrikin cheek, mischief, mateship and bloody minded courage-and the ability to admit and often laugh at his failings.

And, as with Bradman, no one doubted Warne’s love of Australia or his pride in playing for it. Neither looked down on those who looked up to them.

So, 90 years after “The Don” moved to South Australia, I’d like to believe that-despite the weekly presence of an AFL match-he would have at least grudgingly approved of our redevelopment of his beloved Adelaide Oval, which has preserved its heritage features, including the open “Cathedral End” and a scoreboard that once proclaimed Bradman’s mastery to the world.

There’s one thing for certain: 90 years from now Australians and cricket lovers around the world will still be talking about him.  There are 99.94 reasons for doing so.

Mike Rann, a former Premier of South Australia, was once described as “the world’s worst cricketer” by friend and former Australian Test cricketer Darren Lehmann after a match in Chennai, India in which he was clean bowled for a Golden Duck.