Famous Cricketers No 70 - Keith Miller

Victoria and New South Wales. An ankle injury finally persuaded him to give up the game after the All-Australian match at Hobart in 1947. More serious matters now intervened. Miller enlisted as a Trainee Aircrew in the Royal Australian Air Force on 30th January 1942. He was awarded his pilot’s Flying Badge on 12th November 1942. His experiences as a wartime fighter pilot taught him to recognise his priorities in life and left him with a determination to live life to the full. The war also left himwith recurrent back trouble, the result of a flying accident, and this was to hamper his cricket career rendering him, at times, unfit to bowl. Miller played some wartime cricket for the RAAF in which he encountered some redoubtable post-war opponents playing against Trevor Bailey in a RAAF v Navy match at Hove and Denis Compton in a charity match at Lord’s. Compton admitted that Miller’s bowling was faster than anything he had faced since he played against Ernie McCormick of the 1938 Australian team. Miller scored his first century at Lord’s on 15th July 1944 and, three weeks later, playing for “Australia” against an “England” side containing Hammond, Washbrook, Simpson, Edrich, Bailey, Evans and Wright, he top-scored with 85. In 1945, the war over, Miller toured England as a key member of the Australian Services side, playing in five “Victory Tests” against the home Country. In the first game at Lord’s, Miller hit 105 in 210 minutes to set up Australia’s six wicket victory. In the third “Victory Test”, also at Lord’s, Miller the opening bowler emerged. So far in the season he had bowled 44 overs to take three wickets for 81 runs. Now, with some of the fastest bowling seen in England since Larwood, he took a further six for 86 runs dismissing Dewes (twice), Hutton, Edrich, Carr and Pollard. Innings of 118 in the Fourth “Test” and 77 not out in the Fifth raised his aggregate for the series to 443 runs at an average of 63.29. Miller had arrived on the international stage. Following the “Victory Test” series, Miller played for a Dominions side against England and produced one of his greatest innings. He was 61 not out overnight on the second day including a six hit into the top tier of the pavilion. On the third morning he added 124 more runs in ninety minutes hitting a further six sixes one of which nearly cleared the Lord’ pavilion. Miller’s 185 was made out of an all-out total of 336 with only four of his batting colleagues reaching double figures and this score formed the basis of a narrow victory for the Dominions side. Miller’s play during the season marked his emergence as the new golden boy of cricket and earned him the lasting nickname of “nugget”. The Services side went on to play matches in India, Ceylon and Australia in the winter of 1945/46. Miller made three more hundreds and took nineteen wickets his performances making him an automatic choice for Australia’s first post-war tour to New Zealand in the spring of 1946. Here, at Wellington’s Basin Reserve Ground, he played in his first Test Match scoring 30 runs in Australia’s only innings and taking two wickets for six runs in the second New Zealand innings. In this game he opened Australia’s attack for the first time with Ray Lindwall. The pair were to prove one of the great fast bowling partnerships of all time, worthy successors to Gregory and McDonald of the early 1920’s, and their spearhead was a prime cause of Australia’s immediate post-war supremacy. Between them they took 370 Test wickets in the period 1946 to 1956 which represented 38.9% of all the wickets to fall to Australian bowlers in the matches they took part in. Australia won 33 Test Matches in this period and lost only eight. Between 1946 and January 1952 they won 24 games out of 31 losing only two. Miller also contributed seven Test centuries, three against England and four against West Indies. In 55 Test Matches he scored 2958 runs at an average of 36.97 and took 170 wickets at 22.97. On seven occasions he took five wickets or more in a Test innings and once, at Lord’s in 1956, he took ten wickets in a match, a performance that secured his Country’s only win of that series. Miller’s work took him from Melbourne to Sydney where he began a successful career with New South Wales which lasted until his retirement from Sheffield Shield cricket after the 1956 tour of England. He was appointed captain of New South Wales in 1952/53 and led them for four seasons 4