Norm O’Neill

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Norm O’Neill : biography

19 February 1937 – 03 March 2008

Early years

The son of a builder, O’Neill was born in Carlton, New South Wales. He had no cricketing associations on his father’s side of the family, but his maternal uncle, Ron Campion, played for the Glebe club in Sydney Grade Cricket. Campion trained for cricket near the O’Neill family home, at Bexley Oval. O’Neill accompanied his uncle to cricket from the age of seven and was given batting practice at the end of each session. At Bexley Primary school, O’Neill was denied a chance to play cricket as the school did not field a team. Moving on to Kogarah Intermediate High School, O’Neill played cricket in defiance of a teacher who recommended that he take up athletics. As a teenager, O’Neill idolised Keith Miller after his uncle took him to the Sydney Cricket Ground: O’Neill saw Miller play that day and was impressed with the way he hit the ball off the back foot.

Under his uncle’s guidance, O’Neill joined the St George Cricket Club club, in the Sydney Grade competition. He steadily moved up through the grades and broke into the first grade side at the age of 16. Sensing his potential, the club’s selectors informed him that regardless of form, he would play the full season, which allowed him to be uninhibited in his batting. He made 108 in seven innings. The next season, he was out 12 times leg before wicket in 15 innings, and run out in the other three. O’Neill attributed his failures to over-aggressiveness and resolved to improve his patience. In the second match of the new season, the 17 year old O’Neill made his first century. With all five state selectors onlooking, he made 28 in the next match and was called into the state squad.

Career peak

The following season O’Neill was Australia’s leading batsman during the 1959–60 tour to Pakistan and India, where he was a part of the last Australian team to win a Test on Pakistani soil for 39 years. After a quiet match in the First Test eigh-wicket win in Dacca in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), in which he scored two and 26 not out, O’Neill played a key role in the victory in the Second Test in Lahore that was to Australia’s last in Pakistan until 1998. O’Neill made his maiden Test century of 134 in the first innings to give Australia a 245-run lead.Haigh, p. 130. He then took his maiden Test wicket in Pakistan’s second innings, that of Shujauddin. This left Australia chasing a target of 122 in the last two hours on the final day. The chase was on schedule with O’Neill partnering Neil Harvey when the Pakistanis began wasting time to prevent an Australian victory. This was implemented by swapping fielders very slowly when the left and right-handed combination of Harvey and O’Neill took a single, and overs began taking seven minutes instead of three. To counter this, Harvey deliberately backed away when a ball was aimed at the stumps and threw away his wicket by letting himself be bowled for 37. This allowed Benaud to come in and bat with O’Neill so that the two right-handed batsmen would give no opportunity to waste time by switching the field. Benaud then threatened Pakistani captain Imtiaz Ahmed with a formal complaint over the time-wasting, and proceesings returned to their normal pace. Australia made the target with a few minutes to spare, with O’Neill on 43.Benaud, pp. 164–167. O’Neill failed to make double figures in the final Test, which was drawn, but ended the series with 218 runs at 72.66. In another tour match, against the President’s XI, O’Neill scored an unbeaten 52 in a low-scoring match as Australia stumbled to their target of 116 with only three wickets in hand.

O’Neill’s performances in Pakistan was such that the parents in one cricket-following Karachi family named their new son Anil for its resemblance to O’Neill. Anil Dalpat went on to become the first Hindu to represent Pakistan, playing nine Tests in the 1980s as a wicketkeeper.

On the five-Test Indian series which followed, O’Neill started slowly, aggregating 60 runs in the first two Tests, which were shared 1–1. He returned to form with a leg-side dominated 163 in a high-scoring draw in the Third Test at Brabourne Stadium in Bombay. After scoring 40 in an innings victory in the Fourth Test in Madras, Australia needed a draw in the Fifth Test in Calcutta with four players injured or ill, while Benaud had a dislocated spinning finger. O’Neill scored 113 in the first innings to help a depleted team take a 137-run first innings lead and prevent India from squaring the series. He was Australia’s leading scorer in the Tests, with 376 runs at 62.66.Benaud, pp. 170–171. He also made his highest first-class score of 284, against an Indian President’s XI in Ahmedabad. He was the top scorer for the whole subcontinental Test tour, with 594 runs in eight matches at 66.00.