Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

100 Achievement and Rejection in Western Australia competition the country must not be overlooked for potential State players. Immediately after the match against Bradman’s departing tourists, Keith travelled to coach and lecture in Kalgoorlie, some 600 kilometres east of Perth – a small preliminary to an extensive winter tour in the state’s south-west. From 1 June until 5 July 1948 a scheduled visit to 22 towns expanded to some 34 centres, as news spread of lectures and coaching sessions enthusing large audiences. While appreciative letters poured into The West Australian from many country officials, his visit to Albany, the largest town on the south coast, and in those times a full day’s journey from Perth, provided the fullest illustration of the nature and impact of his lecturing and coaching. ‘The State coach,’ reported The Albany Advertiser , had a rope strung high across the stage from which was suspended a cricket ball on a long cord. At the conclusion of a screening of pictures [on lantern slides] of Test players in action … he gave a practical demonstration of how to play correct shots. He moved gracefully and easily and played strokes from the front foot, the back foot … to the on and to the off, the ball whizzing out high over the heads of the audience and coming back to be despatched away with another well executed stroke. When he invited boys to come on the stage ‘for a hit’, a queue ‘reached from the top of the stage steps’ to well into the middle of the hall. Above all, one marked feature of Mr Carmody’s coaching is the wonderful patience he shows in teaching schoolboys the basic principles of cricket. On Monday night he was fully prepared to continue till after midnight to give every boy who was in the long queue individual instruction. ‘The opportunities available to the average country lad to reach first-class cricket are naturally very limited,’ wrote one correspondent to The West Australian, ‘ and it is indeed pleasing to the people in the country to see Keith Carmody extending his activities in such an energetic and pleasing manner.’ But Keith wasn’t limiting his efforts to one inspirational tour. Cricket was already popular in the many centres he visited and since the 1920s there had been an annual Country Week, in which teams played each other in Perth. Now for the first time he ensured that one outcome of his tour was a regular Junior