Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

83 The Australians spent 42 and a half hours travelling by train on The Frontier Mail from Bombay to Lahore for the first game on 28, 29 and 30 October against North Zone. After a draw notable mainly for 138 not out by the teenage Imtiaz Ahmed, one of the future greats of Pakistan cricket, the tourists re-boarded The Frontier Mail for a twelve-hour journey to New Delhi. 35 Following another drawn match against the Princes’ XI captained by the Maharajah of Patiala – the organiser of Tarrant’s pre-war tour – the Australians were entertained by the Viceroy, Viscount Archibald Wavell, in a residence ‘lavishly furnished and modernised inside’ and boasting ‘approximately 42 bedrooms’, wrote Sismey. More important for the survival of the tour than sumptuous symbols of Imperial authority was that New Delhi was the home 35 There they were surprised to be met by former South Australian Test batsman Victor Richardson, who had been serving in the Australian Volunteer Air Observers Corps. The Victory ‘Tests’ and the Long Road Home Keith aboard R.M.S.Samaria in late September 1945, with a lifebelt less needed after the formal surrender of Japan earlier that month. K.S.Duleepsinhji, then a senior statesman of Indian cricket, and Lindsay Hassett, the Services captain, at Bombay in November 1945.