Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

38 match belonged to K.Miller, a Victorian player of whom it is to be hoped much may be heard, and seen, after the war.’ His top score of 91 combined careful defence with hitting of ‘immense power’. And for the first time there was recognition of his bowling: he ‘would have finished off the RAF first innings with a hat-trick if a difficult catch at backward short leg had been held.’ * * * * * * * In October and early November 1943 Carmody flew six sorties for 461 Squadron, mostly of 11 and 12 hours, with two only five and six and one as long as 14 hours. Without the evidence that the squadron saw serious combat immediately before Keith was assigned to it, Bullen’s claims that he was shielded from active service for the sake of cricket and public moralemight have seemed more credible: five of these patrols were recorded as ‘uneventful’ and the other as ‘one sub sighted by patrol, no contact’. This record makes plausible the claims of Ron Prentice, quoted by Bullen, that Carmody demanded a transfer from the Sunderlands: ‘these rather cumbersome and very uncomfortable “whales” did not suit Keith and he left for more active fields’. Prentice was close to Carmody at the time, after joining the Squadron just a month earlier and even appearing with Plum Warner in one of Keith’s photographs at Lord’s during the match in early August. Other photographs revealed social contacts in Kent in the winter of 1943/44 and still others games of rugby and golf near Carlisle that must have been during breaks from his training with OTU 9 (Coastal Command) at nearby Crosby-on- Eden in preparation for joining RAAF 455 Squadron. Initially using obsolescent Hampdens, re-deployed from bombing raids on Germany as torpedo bombers for Coastal Command, the squadron was re- equipped in late 1943 with Bristol Beaufighters manned by a pilot and navigator only: the OTU – newly transferred from near Belfast – provided the essential training. * * * * * * * In the Air and on the Field with the RAAF Keith ready for some Cumberland rugby in the winter of 1943/44.