The legendary Don's hit parade

HEROES are always smaller in real life. Take Sir Donald Bradman, for instance. As far as Australian heroes go, he's as big as it gets. But if the life-size statue of the Don in Bowral is anything to go by, he wasn't much taller than me – and that's not very tall at all.

The smaller-than-expected statue overlooks Bradman Oval in this southern highlands town, metres away from where the cricketing legend hit his first century in a schoolboy match against Mittagong in the summer of 1920-21. It stands in the garden of the International Cricket Hall of Fame, home of the new Bradman Gallery, which opened on November 26.

Few sporting heroes capture the imagination of Australians more than Sir Donald Bradman. The story of the young Bradman honing his cricketing skills by using a cricket stump to hit a golf ball against the curved brick stand of a water tank has become a modern fable, inspiration to countless sporting hopefuls across the country that practice can indeed make perfect.

Bradman grew up in Bowral and his ashes, along with those of his wife, Lady Jessie Bradman, are scattered among the rose bushes (beautiful highly scented blood-red 'Sir Donald Bradman' roses, of course) in the garden in which his statue stands. There has been a museum dedicated to Bradman at the oval since 1996. But the new complex, which opened in 2010 and now goes by the much grander name of the International Cricket Hall of Fame, is designed to appeal to those who know nothing about cricket (like me), as well as cricket tragics (like my partner).

There are six galleries within the complex, with more to come in the next 12 months. It starts with one called "The Game" that (usefully, for me) explains what cricket is about, both the rules and its intangible "spirit". Touchscreens demystify all those weird and wonderful terms, such as "leg cutter", "yorker" and "outswinger" and explain what the umpire's hand signals mean. You can even try your hand at different batting strokes and bowling techniques and position players on an interactive fielding table to see how strategy can win or lose a game.

There are other galleries on the origins of the game (bet you didn't know that the first international cricket match was between America and Canada in New York in 1844), World Series Cricket, the game through the eras, cricketing greats, a theatre that screens highlights from famous Test matches and an exhibit dedicated to the infamous bodyline series. Highlights include an ancient club-like bat from the mid-18th century that's made from oak and is twice the weight of a modern bat, dissected cricket balls and, during our visit, the original Sheffield Shield (on loan from Adelaide Oval, it has since been returned but curator David Wells is confident they will be able to display it again in future). For true cricket tragics, the museum has the statistics of every player – male and female – who has ever played for his or her country at an international level and hundreds of interviews with famous international players, as well as iconic items such as Brett Lee's pants and Sachin Tendulkar's shirt. For most visitors, though, the highlight is the new Bradman Gallery, dedicated to his life and cricketing career, with exhibits that not only cover his "wizardry with the willow" but also examine the social reasons he became a national icon. It's an outstanding collection of memorabilia, with bats, balls, blazers, handwritten letters, photographs and slides.

There is also a replica dressing room and even a water tank where you can have a go at hitting a golf ball with a stump. It's ostensibly for children but it was the adults who were fighting over the stump while we were there.

The Bradman Gallery is just one stop on the Bradman Trail, which begins in Cootamundra in south-western NSW, where Bradman was born in 1908 in a weatherboard cottage that was run as a lying-in hospital by midwife "Granny" Scholz. She later famously joked that she was the first person to get Bradman out.

The cottage has been restored and is now a small museum. The Bradmans actually lived 20 kilometres to the north at Yeo Yeo and the original two-room slab cottage, which was dismantled and moved in 1983, is on display at the Temora Rural Museum.