Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

75 in the two innings – England’s selection gamble failed dismally. 31 Cristofani took four for 43 and five for 49 in a four-wicket Australian victory. Laid low by lumbago, Hammond scored only 13 in the first innings and failed to bat in the second, leaving it to Hutton to carry the England batting with 104 in the first innings and 69 in the second, when he was well supported by Bill Edrich’s 58. Only Hassett’s first-innings 68 was more than Carmody’s 32, a score equalled by Cristofani. But in the second innings Miller’s 71 not out, Sismey’s 51 and three other tallies in double figures renewed the pressure on Carmody, who scored just a single before the Australians won by four wickets. Immediately after the Lord’s ‘Test’ Carmody had mixed fortunes in two drawn two-day matches: 38 for the RAAF against a Coventry side for whom Kent’s Arthur Fagg made exactly 100; and a duck for Australian Services against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane. After three one-day matches for the RAAF produced five runs against Durham, 46 against Greenock and eleven against a Scotland XI at Glasgow, Whitington’s syndicated reports told Australians that ‘Carmody’s form has been most worrying of late’. In an oblique reference to the effects of his PoW experiences – later made more emphatically in Cricket Caravan (1950) – Whitington added that Keith was ‘still finding it most difficult to achieve adequate concentration for a Test match’, even though ‘for sheer batting ability, he would, I suppose, rank third in the side to Miller and Hassett’. Stanford’s 101 not out against Durham made his claim for a ‘Test’ recall irresistible, as Keith himself acknowledged by volunteering to stand down. But as twelfth man he still had an unexpected role on the last day of the drawn Fourth ‘Test’ at Lord’s from 6 to 8 August. Batting first, Australia were all out for 388, thanks especially to 118 by Miller and half-centuries from Pepper and Sismey. Discarding its experiment with youth, England were well served by the returning George Pope (four for 83) and boasted a talented top-six batting order of Laurie Fishlock, Jack Robertson, Hutton, Hammond, Washbrook and Edrich. At the end of the second day fine batting from Fishlock (69) and Hammond and Washbrook, not out 38 and 31, was one reason for an impressive 31 White’s performance must have been especially disappointing to The Times’ correspondent, who’d regarded him as the best of the three young men, ‘a batsman of natural talent and of a temperament unlikely to be shaken by the occasion’. While both Carr and Dewes were to play for England in real Tests in the future, and enjoy successful county careers, White would play only six first-class matches between 1945 and 1957 – his interests were in stockbroking and flying – spending the 20 years before his death in 1990 as the fifth Baron Annaly, of Annaly and Rathcline. The Victory ‘Tests’ and the Long Road Home