The iconic Keith Miller: A tribute

Miller's controversial book 'Bumper'

Keith Miller led a charming life and did enough to get more than one biographer. Mihir Bose wrote a book on him in 1980. So did R.S. Whitington in 1981. Then, more than a decade later, Roland Perry wrote a couple of books on him.

Miller himself was a prolific writer. He wrote for the Daily Express for many years. He even wrote as many as ten cricket books, most of them being published in the 1950s. Many of them were ghost-written, though- either by Jack Pollard or by R.S. Whitington.

Miller never had the 'luck' to become Australia's captain. He became the vice -captain in 1952-53 but was replaced by Morris before the 1953 Ashes series. It created the unusual and perhaps slightly awkward situation of the New South Wales captain being subordinate to the national vice-captain.

His book 'Bumper' was published in April 1953, just before the Ashes.In that book he criticized Hassett's captaincy and his views on Bradman were not that great as well. He stated that those were the words of co-author Whitington but the damage was already done. This book did play a part in Miller being demoted from the position of the vice-captain.

Miller's views were often honest and, at times, they were even slightly outrageous. When he was clearly irritated with Australia's performance in the 1970-71 Ashes, he wrote in one of the newspapers: " To Hell with The Ashes. Dump them. ( Illingworth, Lawry, the urn etc). Get rid of them...The public just cannot tolerate the play-safe cricket we have so often seen this series".

Bibliography:

The Summer Game by Gideon Haigh

Bradman's Invincibles by Roland Perry

Keith Miller- A Cricketing Biography by Mihir Bose

Fifty Years in Cricket by Len Hutton & Alex Bannister

A Bibliography of Cricket by E.W. Padwick (compiler)