Norm O'Neill - cricket colossus
St George Cricket Club | May 15, 2023
In the last half of the 1950s and into the 60s, Norm O’Neill was up there with Australia’s top sports superstars. He was the most charismatic cricketer of his day and the game’s biggest crowd-puller.
With the sporting public in awe of the all-conquering St George rugby league team’s pace, power and skills, Normie was showing the same characteristics for the St George cricket team. Just as Reg Gasnier had added glamour and class to the St George football team to lift it to a new level, so Norm added those qualities to St George, NSW and Australian cricket.
Nearly six feet (182cm) tall, nugget and strong, Normie was a superb athlete and a perfectly orthodox right-handed batsman who was also the hardest hitter of his day – a rare combination. Perhaps no one has been as powerful driving off the back foot. His signature shot banged into the pitch to bounce over the bowler’s head and race to the sightboard.
Billy Watson, Brian Booth and Warren Saunders were all in contention for test spots, but it was Normie who captured the imagination of the sports and general media. Athletic and with Hollywood good locks, Norm played cricket with power, style and finesse, and he was a superb fieldsman. This was no surprise as in winter he doubled as one of Australia’s best baseballers.
Until he retired at the end of the 1965-66 Ashes series at only 29 years of age, Norm often overshadowed his famous contemporaries Benaud, Davidson, Harvey and Simpson. In the current era, with its emphasis on power hitting and spectacular fielding Norm would have been a millionaire superstar.
With much less top-level cricket played in those days, test and state players were able to turn out for their clubs far more often. For St George, his batting average was 62. Yes, 30 runs fewer than Bradman but no one else averaged more than 50.
Test and state commitments meant he played just a third of the innings at St George of his great friends and contemporaries, Booth, Watson and Saunders – but he averaged 17 runs more per innings than the rest of those three.
Like Bradman, he dominated as a youth and was even chosen out of second grade to play for NSW Colts. Richie Benaud, his Test captain, once said that whenever Normie got runs, so dominant was his batting that Australia almost invariably won the test match.
New York Yankees: Should he have gone?
In 1958, with the Australian team away for the summer in South Africa, the 20-year old O’Neill took the cricket word by storm, and the Amercian baseball scouts came offering big money. With good reason as Norm had the best throwing arm ever seen in cricket. He was a mighty baseball batter and had been named in the All-Australian team for 1957.
Billy Watson, a first grade baseballer, said Norm was streets ahead of any baseballer he had ever seen. Fred Bennett, a state baseball coach and later a Cricket Australia chairman, agreed.
An offer to join the famed New York Yankees was big news and media speculation raged for months. Eventually Norm stuck with cricket. For his first 14 Tests he averaged 63, dominating at home and away. But cricket did not pay its players very well in those days, any many of Norm’s friends think he should have taken the US offer.
If he had, it would have been a huge loss for cricket, as those who saw him regarded him as among the most exciting cricketers ever seen.
This story was originally published in the book written by John Rogers titled “Mr St George” - Warren Saunders and the culture of success he inspired.
