Dimly fades the Don

Five years after Sir Donald Bradman died, it seems as if Australia is slowly forgetting the man who dominated cricket in the last century and who still holds many of the game's batting records. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the numbers of people visiting the Bradman Museum in the Don's birthplace of Bowral has slumped from 85,000 a year in the late 1990s to about 40,000 now. Reduced income and rising costs have led to the museum's founding director, Richard Mulvaney, stepping down on Friday after 17 years in charge.

In addition, England will not play a game at the Bradman Oval in Bowral on this winter's Ashes tour, unlike in previous years.

Mulvaney blames the lack of interest on a decline in the "tradition of the Australian family hopping into the car on a Sunday and going out for a collective outing", although Bowral is only about an hour's drive from Sydney. But there is also a question of whether people today want something more modern than just a memorial to the greatest batsman who ever lived. The museum plans to attract younger fans with regularly changing exhibitions, a focus on one-day cricket and, shudder, "interactivity".

Depressingly, the museum says that while older visitors still enjoyed trying to hit a golf ball with a stump against a water tank as Bradman used to do to hone his game, younger fans were more interested in facing Brett Lee on a computer.