Cricket: Miller More Than a Hero of Yesteryear

Perhaps Keith Miller would have approved, but there must be scores of Australian Test cricketers shaking their heads in bewilderment at events in Chennai. Australian batsmen keep walking off the pitch without waiting to see the upraised finger of the umpire. Adam Gilchrist and Jason Gillespie marched off; Mike Kasprowicz departed even though a bemused umpire David Shepherd had given him 'not out'. Ian Chappell must be leading the head-scratching down under. Barry Richards' assertion that 'the only time you ever see an Australian walk is when he has run out of petrol' appears to be outmoded.

My guess is that Miller would have loved to have been a member of this Australian side. Ricky Ponting ('got any winners, Ricky?') or even Adam Gilchrist are more his type of Australian than Sir Donald Bradman, of whom Miller once said, 'I didn't get on with him as a man. We had nothing in common,' before adding: 'But as a batsman, captain and tactician he had no equal.'

Miller would surely have warmed to the approach of the current team: the headlong pursuit of runs and wickets with only victory rather than the draw as their goal. He may have been more ambivalent about their training regime. He could have chugged along at the back of the pack alongside Darren Lehmann.

Miller, who died last week, was not one of those who routinely castigated the modern generation. His old mate and fellow Brylcreem user, Denis Compton, once berated him at length about the trend for helmets, arm guards and chest pads, implying that the modern cricketer had gone soft. Miller patiently waited for the end of tirade before saying: 'Denis, if the helmet had been available in our era, I would have made sure you wore it.'

Miller was a fiercely competitive cricketer when the contest was delicately balanced, easily bored when it was all too one-sided, as his famous duck at Southend in 1948 suggests. As Australia were on the way to amassing 721 against Essex, Miller showed no interest in the fray and let his first ball from Trevor Bailey hit his stumps. Apparently he was more interested in his game of poker in the dressing room. That he should have a sense of perspective about the game is easier to explain than the current altruistic tendencies of some of the Australia team.

Miller was not affected by fear of failure and the 'pressure' that is a common lament of the modern cricketer. 'Pressure?' he once mused, 'I'll tell you what pressure is. It's having a Messerschmitt up your arse.' Miller was a fighter pilot during the Second World War and after one sortie he crash-landed his Mosquito in Norfolk. The search for the young Australian was fruitless until it transpired that he had hit upon a village cricket match nearby and had joined in. Or so the story goes.

There are so many stories about Miller, the bon viveur , the dashing all-rounder and the hero of any self-respecting young Australian - or Englishman for that matter. You can never be sure of their historical accuracy, but that doesn't really matter. They help to reflect the glamour of the man. By comparison even Andrew Flintoff is a little grey.

It is said that he once knocked on the hotel door of Bradman one night, dinner-suited and ready for action, to inform his captain that he had indeed been in bed at the time of the curfew, but now he was going out. He was a successful captain of New South Wales; Richie Benaud says that he was the best he ever played under and the best Australia never had.

But attention to detail was not always his strength. When he realised that he had 12 men on the field at the start of a game in Sydney he blurted out: 'One of you bugger off and the rest scatter.'

In this era , Miller would have been the marketing man's dream. Impeccably dressed, with his mane of unusually long black hair and dripping with charisma, he would have been advertising more than Brylcreem. Even in the 1950s his celebrity status loomed large.

And so in true Aussie style it had to be punctured now and again. During a break in a state game in Adelaide Sid Barnes of New South Wales emerged with the drinks. He proceeded to brush the players' flannels, to spray deodorant into their armpits and to brush captain Miller's hair while holding up a mirror to his face while a portable radio played music in the background.

Miller, we assume, would have welcomed the prank just as he would have upheld the right for Gilchrist, Gillespie and Kasprowicz to play the game their way in Chennai. In the meantime, whether batting or bowling, he would have been legitimately tearing into the Indians with every sinew. Since this is a contest that matters.