Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

93 Chapter Five Achievement and Rejection in Western Australia In 1946/47 Keith consolidated the position in the New South Wales team he’d struggled to hold before the war. 38 Although heavily out-scored by his opening partner, Arthur Morris, in all Shield matches and two against the touring MCC, he had promising tallies of 93 against South Australia, 80 (Victoria), 73 and 63 (Queensland) and 65 (MCC). He also had a top score of 101 for Mosman and averaged 47 runs per hour throughout the grade season. A career with the country’s most successful state seemed likely before an approach from the newest one offered a less certain but enticing future. With no victories in 43 first- class matches between 1919 and 1940 against New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria, incoming MCC teams and outgoing Australian ones, Western Australia’s cricket record was as arid as the Nullarbor Plain’s 1,800 kilometres of desert separating it from the settled areas of South Australia. 39 When the Western Australian Cricket Association [WACA] applied for admission into the Sheffield Shield in 1946, the contributions of seven West Australians to a Combined XI’s draw against MCC in October 1946 convinced the Perth Daily News that ‘the excellent performance of our players against Hammond’s English side … clinched the argument’. 40 But two other factors were more important in persuading the Board of Control in January 1947 to admit the state. As the newspaper acknowledged, the arrival of the Services team by plane at Perth’s Guildford Airport earlier that year, rather than by ship at Fremantle, symbolised an era in which ‘distance has been largely annihilated’. Even more crucial was the support of Don Bradman. 38 Keith’s opening partner for the South Australian match was Jock Livingston, who’d played with him in the 1933 ‘goodwill’ matches between Bradman’s and McCabe’s teams. Keith’s 93 out of 138 included a characteristic blend of ‘brilliant hitting’ and a ‘completely blind swipe’ that ended his innings. 39 There were no matches in this period against the other Shield state, Queensland, and a solitary draw against non-Shield Tasmania in Hobart in 1934. 40 MCC were led in this match by Norman Yardley, rather than tour captain Hammond.