Keith Miller - Style and Personality

Style and Personality

Miller combined classy strokeplay with big hitting, his front foot play especially devastating. He had a rifle like straight drive, played pull and sweep shots with a minimum of effort and was able to cut elegantly. He combined this elegance with unorthodoxy, hitting two sixes over square leg with a backhand tennis shot and once beginning the day's play in a Test match with a six. One straight six that he hit at the Sydney Cricket Ground was still rising when it hit the first deck of the M.A. Noble Stand. Len Hutton said he was "the most unpredictable cricketer I have played against".

As a bowler, Miller had a classically high arm action, moving the ball sharply either way and able to make the ball rise from a good length. His action caused opposition batsmen to perceive that his deliveries were gaining pace after pitching. He was often able to generate more pace than his new ball partner, Lindwall. He was always willing to try something new if the batsman were set, varying his approach from fifteen paces to five and vice-versa. A round arm delivery often managed to capture a wicket, surprising the batsman. Compton said that Miller "often had no preconceived idea what he intended to bowl even as he turned to start his run". Miller often mixed slow leg breaks when he was bowling off a run. He once bowled English opening batsman David Sheppard with a googly during a Test. Hutton opined that Miller was the bowler who was least concerned with the position of his bowling mark, and said that he "never felt physically safe against him". His use of bouncers at Trent Bridge during the 1948 tour was seen by the English crowd as excessive, who booed him. Miller simply sat down until the barracking had subsided. He was often required to bowl through pain, pressing a disk into place at the base of his spine before sending down the next delivery.

Miller and Lindwall formed an opening partnership that was regarded as one of the greatest of all time. Hutton said that the pair was the most hostile that he faced during his career. Alan Davidson, a bowling all rounder who supported Lindwall and Miller for New South Wales and Australia, said that "Ray Lindwall was the best bowler I ever saw of any type. his control was just perfect. At the other end you had Miller, who was unpredictable...It really was a perfect team." He was an acrobatic slips fielder, who would take freakish catches with nonchalant ease, often immediately returning to his discussion with those around him as if nothing was unusual.

Miller often required a contest to retain interest in the game. He deplored Bradman's ruthless attitude towards annihilating the opposition and sometimes refused to try when Australia was in an unassailable position. At Southend in 1948, as the Australians scored a world record 721 runs in a single day against Essex, Miller, coming in to bat when the score was 2/364, allowed himself to be bowled first ball. Indeed, he "turned to the wicketkeeper and said: "Thank God that's over"." His teammate Sid Barnes said that if Miller "had the same outlook as Bradman or Ponsford he would have made colossal scores" and become "the statisticians' greatest customer".

Miller never captained Australia in a Test, as his attitude to the game tended to alarm the authorities. About Miller, Ashley Mallett wrote, "He loved tradition, but hated convention. His unstructured way of playing and living would be anathema to cricketers now... He played as he fought the war, by impulse and mood." He sometimes set his field by saying to his players: "scatter". On another occasion, he is reported turned to his players, after being told that NSW was taking the field with one player too many, and asked for one player to volunteer to "piss off".

A larger than life character, Miller is the subject of many stories, often apocryphal. One story had Don Bradman answering a knock on the door late one night to see Miller dressed in a dinner suit. Miller advised Bradman that, as demanded, he was in bed at curfew and was now going out. His relationship with Bradman was one riddled with friction and mutual antipathy, "... one a roundhead of massive influence, the other a cavalier and maverick". As Bradman moved from batting hero and team captain to selector and administrator, his influence grew; this "... almost certainly cost Miller any chance of captaining his country".

One night, following a duel with Messerschmitts in his Mosquito, he made an unauthorised detour over Bonn because it was Beethoven's birthplace and he was a lover of the classics. Despite his fame, Miller remained a humble man; when asked his favourite cricketing memory, he would recall no incident concerning himself, but "a South Australian team-mate walking onto Lord's to a thunderous ovation a few weeks after his release from a POW camp". The cricket broadcaster, John Arlott said "that for all the glamour that attached to Miller, he was staunch and unaffected as a friend".

When asked how he managed to take seven wickets for just 12 runs against South Australia, Miller replied:

There's three reasons, First, I bowled bloody well. Second, I, errr ... second ..." . "You can forget about the other two reasons."