Keith Miller enlivened the postwar years with his brilliant allround play, able to turn a match with an attacking innings or a fiery spell of bowling. He is probably best remembered for his new-ball partnership with Ray Lindwall, but it was as a classical batsman that he first made his mark: a photograph of Miller clipping a textbook square-drive adorned the desk of the cricket-loving Australian prime minister Robert Menzies for many years.

But "Nugget" Miller was more than a cricketer: along with his English soulmate Denis Compton he embodied the idea that there was more to life than cricket. Miller, who was named after two pioneer Australian pilots - Keith and Ross Smith - was a fighter pilot himself in the Second World War, and after some extremely close shaves was well aware of the importance of life. It meant that he could occasionally look disinterested on the field: at Southend in 1948, when the "Invincible" Australians were running up the record score of 721 in a day against Essex, Miller stepped away to his first ball and was bowled, since such an unequal contest held little excitement.

Neville Cardus dubbed Keith Miller "the Australian in excelsis", a notion to which the noted Daily Mail sportswriter Ian Wooldridge heartily subscribed: "By God he was right." He died in October 2004 after being in poor health for some time.
Steven Lynch