A cap worn by Australian cricket legend Don Bradman has sold for 479,700 Australian dollars (£245,000) at an auction in Sydney.
Bradman wore the cap – known as a ‘baggy green’ – in the 1947-48 home Test series against India, during which he scored his 100th first-class century.
Auction house Bonham’s described the cap, external as “sun faded and worn”, with “some insect damage” and “some loss to [the] edge of [the] peak”.
It was bought for 390,000 Australian dollars (£200,000) before the addition of a buyer’s premium was added to the fee.
Bradman, who died aged 92 in 2001, is widely regarded as cricket’s greatest-ever batter, averaging 99.4 runs per Test innings.
The series against India was his last on home soil and he scored 715 runs in six innings at an average of 178.75 – with three centuries and a double-hundred – as Australia won 4-0.
India were also playing in their first international cricket tour as an independent country.
Bradman’s cap had been on loan since 2010 to the Bradman Museum in the player’s hometown of Bowral.
Following the 1947-48 Indian tour, Bradman gave the cap to the Indian team tour manager, Pankaj Gupta, who passed it on to the Indian team’s wicket keeper PK Sen.
It was purchased by the current owner in 2003, auction house Bonhams said.
