Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

25 Escape From Poverty A dearth of personal sources makes it impossible to comment on Keith’s reactions to his mother’s death or indeed to shed light on his relationship with his father, either in 1941 or at the time of his death in May 1950. The emphasis of the public record on Keith’s cricket means that only later evidence reveals his interest in other sports. It’s clear from his PoW ‘Log’ and newspaper evidence in post-war Perth that he played baseball, as did many cricketers of his generation when it was a winter sport in Australia. There are photographs of him swinging a club and a golf bag appears in the inventory of his possessions after he went ‘missing in action’. He once told daughter Jill that he felt he could have succeeded as a tennis player at elite levels. Similarly, only by reading backwards from later years is it possible to speculate on the identity of at least one of the girlfriends that a 20- or 21-year-old almost certainly had: his second most prolific correspondent during his near-year as a PoW was Elsie Edwards of Mosman. Reports of the eleven- year-old dashing from shop to practice ground and the teenager singled out to captain junior teams hint at a strong personality. Wartime service soon revealed a clearer picture of the man, as well as the cricketer. On 5 August 1942 the enlistment of Noel in the Army completed the exodus of eligible Carmody menfolk. On that same date Keith sent a postcard of Niagara Falls to his sister, Joyce Mills, bought ‘on the steamer going across the lake from Toronto to the Falls. It takes three hours and is a very nice trip’. He reported on his flight training and other extra-curricular visits to London, Ontario, and across the United States border to Detroit and Buffalo. At that moment he doubtless knew it would take another six months to complete pilot training before transferring to Britain. He could have no idea that ahead of him also lay opportunities to secure the place in first-class cricket he’d reached for but not firmly grasped in Australia, in the process contributing hugely to the efforts made by Sir Pelham (‘Plum’) Warner, England manager on the Bodyline tour, to restore friendly Anglo-Australian cricket relations.