3 minute read

Sir Donald Bradman's first Australian baggy green Test cap will be auctioned on Thursday.

Sir Donald Bradman's first Australian baggy green cap, which he gifted to a friend now in jail for fraud, is up for auction.

The Australian cricket legend's cap from his debut Test series in 1928/29 will be sold on Thursday.

Bradman gave the cap to a family friend, Peter Dunham of Adelaide, in the 1950s.

Dunham, an accountant, was in May this year jailed for eight years and two months for scamming $1.3 million from his investors.

Some of Dunham's victims sought access to Bradman's cap to help pay off the accountant's debts.

Dunham faced the South Australian District Court initially charged with 37 theft and deception charges spanning 2008 to 2015.

Just before his trial, Dunham, now aged 76, pleaded guilty to many of the charges on the condition others were dropped.

The court was told Dunham had repaid about $800,000.

District Court Judge Paul Muscat described Dunham's offending as calculated, deliberate and repetitive and imposed a non-parole period of four-and-a-half years..

Dunham's estate was bankrupted, with Bradman's cap to be sold on Thursday under instructions from the trustee, Oracle Insolvency Services.

The baggy green cap has been on display for the past 17 years, loaned by Dunham to the Bradman collection at the State Library of South Australia.

Bradman was presented with the cap before Australia took on England at Brisbane's Exhibition Ground in November 1928.

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

It will be sold online at Pickles.com.au with the auction starting at 1730 AEDT Thursday.

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.

Warne sold his cap to raise money for bushfire relief, with the bank taking the cap on a national tour before becoming a permanent exhibit at the Bradman Museum in Bowral, NSW.