Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

44 brain devising new tactics in enforced idleness, and eager for the opportunity to apply them, his drawing wasn’t a blueprint for the future but a doodled reminiscence of an innovation already devised in 1944. In his 1977 eulogy, Miller placed the birth of the ‘umbrella field’ firmly in 1944: Over a few drinks one evening Carmody made mention of just how many snicks by batsmen went into the air for a short distance only to fall harmlessly and run to the deep field for easy runs. After a round of discussion with Sismey and the late A.W. ‘Mick’ Roper, Carmody then employed this new look close to the wicket fielding cordon. Snicks were snapped up, runs saved. The umbrella field was a success – it still is. ‘Then,’ said Miller, ‘back at his base at Langham in Norfolk, Carmody was shot down into the North Sea on a low-level attack on German E-boats in his Beaufighter.’ 23 Equally clear is the testimony of Sismey: It was during the 1944 cricket season that the innovative umbrella field – sometimes referred to as the Carmody field – was contrived. This style of field placing for fast bowlers emerged from a pre-match detailed discussion between Keith Carmody, captain of the RAAF team, Stan Sismey and Mick Roper at the Strand Palace Hotel where the team members were booked in. 23 Rowe includes Miller in the group devising the new tactics: Victory Tests, p 70; but Miller didn’t make this claim in his eulogy at Carmody’s funeral. In the Air and on the Field with the RAAF The umbrella field in cartoon form; taken from Keith’s Prisoner of War Log and evidently drawn in 1944.