Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

107 Achievement and Rejection in Western Australia character’. And, added Mailey, ‘Ex-R.A.A.F. pilot Keith Carmody is another fine cricketer with a rich personality. He’s doing a grand job with the Western Australian team. More may be heard of him before the selectors finally choose the captain.’ Another strong supporter was Barnes himself. As a newspaper pundit, his ‘main interest’ on the eve of Western Australia’s match with the MCC team, at the start of the 1950/51 tour, was ‘in the batting of West Australian captain, Keith Carmody, who, if he succeeds, must have a good chance of opening for Australia with Arthur Morris.’ He added: ‘This will be Carmody’s big chance to make the Australian selectors sit up and take notice. I hope he makes the most of it.’ Because Barnes had known Keith since the late 1930s it’s hard to see anything except loyalty to a fellow New South Welshman as reason for this faith in a batsman whose aggregate and average had fallen even lower in the preceding season, to 158 at 19.75. Mailey’s response to the first day of the MCC match was applause for Denis Compton’s 106, rescuing his side from a disastrous start, and high praise for ‘Keith Carmody’s leadership’. A pitch ‘sympathetic to pace’ had helped but it was his field placing ‘rather than devastating bowling’ that was responsible for the early collapse. Opening with ‘two fastish bowlers’, Dunn and Puckett, Carmody dispensed with the traditional fine leg and third man. Instead, all the fieldsmen clustered around the wicket were potential catch takers and this strange, but efficient, field placing was the most sensible I have seen over many years. Neither this early, enthusiastic reference to the ‘umbrella field’ from an eastern states’ supporter nor Keith’s own 59 (lbw Bedser) in the first innings of a drawn match could long stave off local criticism. 49 In December The Western Mail raised, ‘without malice’, ‘the position of the captain of the side’. After leading it to ‘glorious victory’ in 1947/48 Carmody had ‘a lean time and the team finished well down the list’. In the current season he ‘has again failed to strike formand the teamhas gone to pieces’. The comment on his batting was understandable at a time Allan Edwards was scoring centuries in both innings against Queensland in Perth. But it was harsh judgment on a team that had recovered from 49 Although the young Carmody had often been praised for brilliant fielding in the covers, Allan Edwards recalls that he became notably slower-moving during his years in the West, making it inevitable that on occasions he took his place in his own umbrella field, as well as fielding in the slips to the slow left-arm Wally Langdon. In all first-class cricket, he took 39 catches in 65 matches.