Keith Miller, the regal allrounder who impressed everyone in pubs to palaces, has died at the age of 84

Peter English23-Jun-2005

Keith Miller: Australian postwar legend© The Cricketer
Keith Miller, the regal allrounder who impressed everyone in pubs to palaces, has died at the age of 84.An Invincible, a Second World War fighter pilot, a journalist, an elderly recluse: Miller was many things. Above all he was a hero to generations of Australians, even in his old age. “The ladies loved him, and every man wanted to be him,” the broadcaster Michael Parkinson said of his boyhood hero. Boasting film-star looks and a game to match, Miller helped shake the Commonwealth from its postwar despair with his dash and dare.During the war he flew fighter planes over Britain, and survived when the average lifespan was about three weeks. The experience shaped the remainder of his career and helped develop his legend. Cricket was merely one of life’s asides. “I’ll tell you what pressure is,” he once said. “Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse. Playing cricket is not.” A crash-landing left a bad back – “Nearly stumps drawn that time, gents” – but he walked away. On one mission he detoured over Bonn on the way back so he could see the city of Beethoven’s birth. Still, the Allies had stolen his early twenties. He entered the forces as a batsman and exited, reluctantly, as Australia’s fastest bowler.Unconventional and his own man, he raised the ire of Don Bradman on his Ashes debut, at the Gabba in 1946-47, by refusing to bowl fast and short to Bill Edrich. “I’d just fought a war with this bloke. I wasn’t going to take his head off.” He bowled cutters instead, taking 7 for 60 in the first innings in the greatest bowling performance of his career. The batting highlight had come at Lord’s the year before, when he played for the Dominions against England.Players from all over the world were selected yet Miller, according to Wisden, “outshone them all”. On those two August days in 1945 Miller scored a magnificent 185 and peppered seven sixes, one landing on to the top tier of the pavilion, another on the broadcast box. Spectators felt they were safer in the bar; Pelham Warner called it the greatest exhibition of batting he ever saw. RS Whitington, the journalist, author and Miller’s great friend, observed, “It is a tragedy that Australians have never quite seen the Miller of 1945.”

Batting during the Lord’s Test of 1953© The Cricketer
Keith Ross Miller was born in Melbourne in 1919, and named after the aviators Keith and Ross Smith. “Nugget’s” first Test came against New Zealand in 1945-46, in a journey that would lead to his being named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1954 and inducted into the Australian Hall of Fame. Capable of batting at No. 4 and opening the bowling, Miller finished his 55 Tests with 2958 runs at 36.97 and 170 wickets at 22.97. The greatest omission was that he never led his country. Richie Benaud regularly described Miller as the greatest skipper he’d played under. “He was the best captain never to lead Australia,” he said. But Miller was not in the Australian Cricket Board’s image and his anti-establishment methods rankled with more straight-laced administrators. Yet his photo was one of only two in the Canberra office of the Australian prime minister Sir Robert Menzies.He was always at his best in a proper contest. As the Invincibles careered towards 721 in a day against Essex, Miller let himself be bowled first ball by Trevor Bailey and headed for the local racecourse via the dressing-room. In Test retirement he became a touring journalist and columnist for the Daily Express, and in later life was rather reclusive, rarely giving interviews but regularly returning to England. Three hip operations, cancer and a stroke slowed him down, and his shock of black hair turned grey. It blew easily in the wind at the MCG in February, when his statue was unveiled and he gently clapped his frail hands. “I don’t take too much interest in the cricket,” he told Australia’s Inside Edge magazine at the time. “There seems to be a Test match on every day. I spent years playing 55 of them, and these blokes run up 190.”Peter English is Australasian editor of Wisden Cricinfo.