Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

90 The Victory ‘Tests’ and the Long Road Home this tour has earned the right to be included with ‘The Big Four’ … In India, he has developed into a run-making machine. He seems never to fail, and gets his runs with the ease and grace of Alan Kippax. Style aside , Wisden ’s statistics revealed major improvement from Keith’s indifferent form in England. Although his 51.80 average from five ‘Test’ innings was fifth behind those of Pettiford, Pepper, Workman (who’d played only three innings) and Whitington, his aggregate of 259 was second, and only ten runs short of Pettiford’s. He had outscored Hassett, who finished with an average of 47.00. But in all tour matches Hassett headed the averages with 87.40 from 11 completed innings; Carmody came second with 45.50 from 13. Pepper was the leading wicket-taker in the ‘Tests’ with 16, an achievement that fuelled the Bradman-tinged controversy in Adelaide and afterwards. It was a very different story in Australia. In the first match in Perth Miller’s ‘fine 80’ and Carmody’s 22 provided a foretaste of their contrasting performances in later matches. While Miller made further half-centuries against Victoria and Tasmania and 105 not out against New South Wales, Carmody’s highest score was a second-innings 30 against New South Wales. He didn’t play against Queensland and his 26 against Tasmania was overshadowed by Stanford’s 153, Cristofani’s 80, Miller’s 56 and Hassett’s 59. Perhaps he took comfort in the latter match by securing his first-ever first-class wicket, Clifton Jeffery caught by Cec Pepper, during the course of sending down, as seventh bowler, a couple of maiden eight-ball overs in the home side’s first innings. As a ‘reward’ he opened the bowling in the second. 37 Although vagaries of batting form are usually difficult to explain with certainty, the most plausible explanation for Keith’s slump from high achievement in India to low mediocrity in Australia lies in the flamboyance that won him frequent plaudits in pre-war Sydney grade cricket and provoked self-critical surprise at breezy failures on the gritty surface of Stalag Luft III’s improvised pitch. ‘Carmody’s stroke making is already in the Jackson-McCabe class,’ wrote Jack Fingleton at the end of the series in India. If his comment that ‘his mental concentration is rapidly improving’ hinted at lingering effects of the PoW experience, Keith was greeted on arrival in Perth by The West Australian as ‘a believer in the vigorous game … [who] has made runs in fine style.’ 37 Reference books usually report his method as ‘right-arm medium-pace’.