Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

117 Achievement and Rejection in Western Australia was ‘a terrific blow to young WA cricketers who are on the verge of State selection and will most certainly discourage them’. It was also ‘a most disappointing state of affairs to me,’ he continued, as he could ‘see no better prospects than Rutherford’ to fill a vacancy as opening partner for Morris in the Tests. Keith’s fervent support for players in his adoptive state was accompanied by an attack on his original one and on the other powerhouse in Australian cricket. It was ‘a well known fact that to force your way into the Australian XI you must get your performances in Sydney or Melbourne’. Queensland and South Australian players had told him ‘it looks as though New South Wales in particular and Victoria are angling to get the matches back as they were in the old days, when just Victoria and New South Wales played between themselves’. Remarkably, this diatribe was despatched from Melbourne immediately after Hassett’s testimonial match. A man less committed to the West might have exuded satisfaction at justifying his own selection among the stars of the day with an eye-catching innings of 66 in 73 minutes. Said The West Australian : Carmody delighted the crowd with fluent strokes to all parts of the ground. One shot drew thunderous applause – a one-hand straight drive for two off the bowling of Ian Johnson, on whom Carmody was particularly severe. He stepped into anything over-pitched and scored, not so much with sheer power, but by clever timing. If the reporter’s language was a rare echo of past eulogies, the occasion could easily have stirred Keith’s own nostalgia. The only player who matched him for style – and eclipsed his score with a century – was Australia’s 18-year-old rising star, Ian Craig, with whom he shared a partnership on the day and a background at the Mosman cricket club. If anything was likely simultaneously to shake Carmody’s loyalty to the West and further erode the WACA’s confidence about the future, it soon arrived in the state’s first-ever match against New Zealand in March 1954. Fewer than 6,000 spectators watched the entire match that Western Australia lost by 184 runs. A loss of £211 prompted The West Australian to comment: ‘Seemingly cricket followers will not go to see a local team which can neither win matches nor play entertaining cricket.’ Yet at this very time Keith made no response to ‘an attractive offer’, reported by the newspaper, of a position with a Sydney accountancy firm: ‘The job has been open to Carmody for several years, but he has been