The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Millers don't happen overnight

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 12, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Millers don't happen overnight

A tribute... when Miller retired in 1956 by The Hindu's correspondent and Australian Test cricketer J.H. Fingleton.

World worries over Hungary and Suez together with the pending Olympic Games in Australia deny Miller his rightful cricket farewell but his loss to the game is one that possibly won't be filled for decades because Millers don't happen overnight. He was a freak cricketer excelled as an all-rounder in my experience only by the great Hammond, who had more batting potential.

Miller strangely was a keen disliker of the bumper which he bowled so often himself and which opposing bowlers rarely, if ever, gave to him back, but Miller on his best fast bowling days was worthy of Larwood himself.

There is no need to stress his intense popularity with crowds in all cricketing lands. In this he was akin to Bradman but it was in a sense unfortunate that Miller's up and coming days should have coincided with Bradman's declining ones. One often sensed a disputation for the throne a clash of personalities that made Australia the loser in the long run.

One wrote in 1949 that Miller's clash with Bradman at Lord's when he refused to bowl in 1948 together with a few other clashes cost Miller his place for South Africa when Bradman was an Australian selector. Miller diplomatically denied at the time that there was any ill-feeling between Bradman and himself but his recent revelations in print say there was even a bigger clash than I had noted. Miller was a strong field personality, whose captaincy in Australian cricket has been infinitely superior to that of Johnson.

In regretting the passing of one of the greatest of all time, one hopes that one or two others will also retire with him and so end the undercurrent of personalities and politics which has kept our cricket dormant for the past five or six years.

One regrets also that Miller clouded his last playing days by having printed some rather remarkable disclosures of happenings on and off the field and it is possible that the Board of Control in the final reckoning of the tour, will have a final word with Miller about his contract for that tour.

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