Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

116 Achievement and Rejection in Western Australia both ‘a hell of a nice bloke’ and a ‘fine, aggressive captain’: the WACA had been lucky to have such a ‘very good captain, coach and player’ to guide it through its first seasons in the Shield. There isn’t much evidence that the WACA hierarchy agreed with Meuleman. Long before Keith played his last match – and irrespective of his admittedly poor batting record – there was little mutual regard between him and senior administrators. Allan Edwards believed that the ‘umbrella field just shocked the old guys’ and was sure that some ‘had words’ with Keith about it. Almost certainly ‘they hadn’t got what they’d expected’ when they recruited him. But Allan had rather more sympathy than his wife Aileen for an old guard she saw as relics from a rapidly disappearing pre-war world, ‘wearing suits, fob watches and hats!’ They were men who’d worked tremendously hard for the WACA, said Allan, through the long inter-war years of under-achievement and were determined to do all they could to advance the state into Shield ranks: there was probably fault on both sides in the alienation that became entrenched in the 1950s. Despite the gulf between one spirited innovator and a cumbersome collective of committees, Keith Carmody and the WACA were grappling with the same problem, the exacting, almost punitive terms imposed on the state’s entry into the Shield. After borrowing heavily to fund its part-time participation, the WACA needed playing success to attract revenue-raising crowds to meet its obligations to the banks. Part-time status made playing achievement more difficult and momentum from occasional successes elusive. And even that status was probationary, needing to be confirmed each year by the other states. Renewal in January 1950 was accompanied by the announcement that Western Australia was to be deprived of the traditional Combined XI match against MCC at the start of the 1950/51 tour, ‘a staggering blow to cricket in Western Australia’, said the WACA. In January 1954 the situation became even more threatening when the other states foreshadowed that, after a further two years’ competition on a restricted basis, ‘the financial aspect of all tours connected with that State would be closely investigated’. At the same time, to shift the national focus onto the home Ashes series, the Board of Control decreed that the 1954/55 Shield fixtures would be cut in half, leaving Western Australia with just two matches, both against South Australia. In a scathing report to Perth newspapers Carmody denounced ‘the most ludicrous Sheffield Shield program ever foisted onto the cricket world’. It