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As heroes go, Don Bradman has proved more durable than most. Playing before the television era helped, as did the quiet way he lived out his latter years. Nonetheless, cricket fans who've read widely are aware that Bradman had his flaws. He was aloof, a little selfish, perhaps, and parsimonious. Not for him drinks with the boys and colorful chat. Australia's greatest sportsman was an introvert who preferred reading and sipping tea to making friends.

To which you might say, so what? These are hardly grave faults. A new biography of a Bradman contemporary, however, takes the sideshow of trying to demythologize the batting maestro to a new level. The title, Jack Fingleton: The Man Who Stood Up to Bradman (Allen & Unwin; 302 pages) hints that the book is as much about Bradman as Fingleton, a gritty opening batsman who played 18 Tests for Australia in the 1930s and later penned several of cricket's most acclaimed books, including Brightly Fades The Don, a stylish account of Bradman's final appearances for Australia on the 1948 "Invincibles" tour of England.

Born a few months apart in 1908, Fingleton and Bradman were team-mates but never friends. On their first meeting, they had a Pride and Prejudice moment that set the tone of their relationship. Fingleton mispronounced the word tetanus, and Bradman corrected him with what Fingleton, a highly sensitive man except, it seems, where the feelings of others were concerned, perceived as scorn.

From then until his death some 50 years later, Fingleton was The Don's most trenchant critic. He thought him a "little, churlish man" and accused him of everything from dishonesty to cowardice, not only through his books but in the letters and diaries that make up the Jack Fingleton Papers, stored in 27 boxes at the State Library of New South Wales. These documents, which include chummy correspondence with several Australian Prime Ministers, were a boon for Fingleton's biographer, Sydney journalist Greg Growden, who's written a book that would have Bradman, topical again in the centenary of his birth, turning in his grave.

Remarkably, Fingleton, a raconteur of Irish stock, found fault not only with Bradman the man but with Bradman the cricketer — quite a feat considering The Don's record, which marks him as easily the best ever. Fingleton claimed that in a lead-up match to the Bodyline series of 1932-33, Bradman, suspecting he was to be the target of short-pitched bowling from England's fast men, beseeched the rookie Fingleton to shelter him when the pair were batting together. "These blighters are after me," Bradman is alleged to have said. "They intend to bowl at my head. Will you take [Gubby] Allen for me?" Bradman always denied saying any such thing, but Fingleton would cite other instances that, to him, showed Bradman could go weak-kneed in the face of express pace.

Fingleton felt that Bradman used his influence to have the opener miss a tour of England, and other episodes, much debated, cemented his belief that Bradman was inclined to betray team-mates and cover his tracks. Were these grievances playing on Fingleton when he wrote The Immortal Victor Trumper, a biography of his cricketing hero? He could wait no longer than its second paragraph to proclaim: "To me, Trumper remains the greatest batsman who ever lived. Bradman could be rightly advanced against him, but whereas Bradman ... operated upon bowlers like a butcher at the abattoirs ... Trumper was like a surgeon, dissecting everything that was offered against him." This analysis seems wilfully obtuse. Ultimately, batting is about numbers. And in Tests, Bradman averaged a full 60 runs more per innings than Fingleton's man.

The Fingleton that Growden uncovers can be hard to like. A sense emerges of an intolerant man who resented playing second fiddle to anyone; a hater whose insecurities, combined with an elephantine memory, spawned grudges that stunted his capacity for clear thinking. The most telling anecdote concerns Bradman's last Test innings, at The Oval in 1948, when he needed just four runs to average 100 in Tests but, having been applauded all the way to the crease and given three cheers by the English players, was bowled anticlimactically for nought. Watching from the press box, Fingleton and his mate, bowling great Bill "Tiger" O'Reilly, were beside themselves with mirth. Growden defends them: "And why not? They were laughing at a god with feet of clay ... Laughing at an old antagonist who'd just got his comeuppance."

While Growden is mostly clear-eyed about Fingleton, he's too kind to him here. Bradman, who outlived Fingleton by 20 years, was entitled never to forgive him for this childish display, but he showed a greater capacity to move on than Fingleton ever did. Growden's work is a fascinating study of a complex man's relationship with a legend. It should not, however, inspire a broad reevaluation of Bradman's character.

• Daniel Williams