Aussie all-rounder who went from ‘new Bradman’ to ‘Nervous Norman’

Norm O’Neill, who died on 3 March, 2008, aged 71, was one of Australia’s greatest Test cricketers, though he never lived up to his full potential.

Hailed as "the new Don Bradman" at the start of his career, Mr O’Neill cut an impressive figure on the crease and was a master at playing off his back foot, scoring almost 3,000 Test runs. He was also an excellent fielder and bowled at a terrific pace, leading to American baseball teams showing an interest in him.

He was named as a ‘Cricketer of the Year’ by the Wisden almanac after a victorious tour of England in 1961, but shortly afterwards the pressure of expectation seemed to affect him and he hit a bad run of form, ending his career just a few years later.

Norman Clifford O’Neill was born on 19 February, 1937, in the Sydney suburb of Carlton. He began playing cricket when he was just seven with his uncle Ron who took to him to his local club because Norman’s school had no side. At high school he finally got the chance to play schoolboy cricket, though one teacher tried to persuade him to turn his powerful physique to athletics instead.

His hero was the New South Wales all-rounder Keith Miller and he began to emulate Miller’s back-foot style that allowed him to put tremendous power behind strokes. By the age of 16 Mr O’Neill was playing first grade local cricket with Sydney’s St George club.

They had enough faith in him to provide a full season’s batting, which gave him the chance to improve from his early matches in which his aggressiveness saw him repeatedly given LBW or run out. In his second season, still to turn 18, his new, more patient approach was rewarded with a century in the second game.

When he was called up to the New South Wales state squad the following year, he made a calamitous debut, failing to score any runs or take any wickets, despite his team thrashing South Australia. But as his confidence grew, he started to make more of an impact, stringing together a run of 60-plus innings.

He played in his first international against New Zealand in 1957 and had the highest batting average of the tour, making the decision not to include him in the squad that toured South Africa the following year one of the most controversial of the era. Mr O’Neill responded by breaking the 1,000-run mark in that season’s Sheffield Shield, putting him in an elite group containing only Bradman and Bill Ponsford at the time.

His first Test was against England in 1958 at Brisbane. Despite the series being criticised for the low-scoring ("Some of the slowest and worst cricket imaginable," Richie Benaud said), Mr O’Neill came out looking strong, having scored 282 runs, the second highest Australian total.

The following season, as Australia toured Asia, Mr O’Neill established himself as the country’s leading batsman with impressive averages against Pakistan and India. In December, 1960, he got his biggest ever haul of runs, batting to 181 against the West Indies.

The 1961 Ashes tour marked the peak of his career, with an incredible 1981 runs over the course of matches against Yorkshire, Lancashire, Glamorgan and the MMC and the five Tests. Australia retained the Ashes 2-1 and Mr O’Neill was named by Wisden as one of their five ‘Cricketers of the Year’.

Sadly this career highlight was the beginning of the end for Mr O’Neill who reacted badly to the praise being heaped on him. He acquired the unfortunate nickname ‘Nervous Norm’ for erratic, awkward starts. When England came to Australia in 1962/63, his batting and bowling averages were suffering and hampered the team as they limped to a 1-1 series draw.

He showed improvement but was still a long way below his previous Test average of 53 runs during a series against South Africa and was even worse in tours of India and England. At 28 he played in his final Test against the West Indies at Bridgetown in 1965. He played for New South Wales the following season but retired, dejected, after being demoted to Australia’s second team.

Throughout his cricketing career he had worked as a cigarette salesman and had to fit matches and training around his job. He scored 2779 runs in 42 Tests and 13,859 in 188 First Class matches, while his bowling average at both levels stood at around 40. After giving up playing, he became a cricket commentator. His son, Mark, represented New South Wales and Western Australia in the 1980s.

Warren Saunders, a team-mate at New South Wales, was among those to pay tribute to Mr O’Neill: "I’ve got beautiful memories of Norm – he was a sensational cricketer and a wonderful fellow to play with in every respect, a great team man, a champion batsman."

Creagh O’Connor, chairman of Cricket Australia, said: "He was the type of player who, at his best, won the hearts of the public through the way he played. He was great to watch when he was batting, but he was also a magnificent fielder in the covers."