(Ken Piesse is a Melbourne-based cricket writer.)

Charismatic Keith Miller's standing as an Australian war hero has been questioned in a new book on the Victory Test matches of 1945.

British author Mark Rowe questions the hero worshipping of Miller and says he had "an oddly quiet war", including just eight combat hours as a bomber pilot with the RAF.

"(Afterwards) he told enough stories to leave the impression that he had as active a war as anybody," says Rowe. "His biographers bought the story. But it was misleading. Two missions, in the last weeks of the war, while the German air force, and Germany, were on their last legs? A man could hardly have done less; and Miller knew it."

Rowe researched war records exhaustively and also travelled to Australia to interview several of the Australians involved in the 1945 Tests, where Miller, a Shield player with Victoria before the war, made his name as a cricketer of extraordinary flair before becoming one of the Invincibles.

Though never given official Test-match status, the three so-called Victory Tests were played in England from May to August 1945 between a combined Australian Services XI and an English national side. The first match began less than two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe and the matches were embraced by the public as a way to get back to their way of life from before the war.

In the UK-release The Victory Tests, England v Australia 1945, Rowe does not doubt Miller's courage and says he did face danger, but it was fleeting compared with that faced by others, such as contemporary and fellow Victory Test teammate Reg Ellis, who flew 11 missions in seven weeks.

"The air force had its money's worth (from Ellis). But not from Miller," he says.

Known for his  affairs with the rich and famous and for refusing directives from Don Bradman to bowl one day at Lord's, cricket was never more than a diversion for Miller, known as the Errol Flynn of cricket.

Pressure, he famously once told chat show host Michael Parkinson was "having a Messerschmitt up your arse at 20,000 feet."

He was celebrated for once taking a detour after a mission to fly over the birthplace of Beethoven, his favorite composer.

Author Rowe says Miller, who died in 2004 at the age of 84, spent an inordinate amount of time training.

"Only near the very end of the war, on April 4, 1945, did Miller reach the front line:  RAF 169 Squadron, flying Mosquitoes in bomber support, from Great Massingham in Norfolk," he said.

"On April 23 he flew his first mission - a beginner's, really - a ‘spoof patrol', up at 9.45pm and down at 2.05am, part of an attempt to divert the enemy from a larger effort elsewhere. The squadron merely logged his four-hour, 20-minute flight as ‘uneventful'.

"His second and final wartime night mission on May 2 was shorter - three hours and 25 minutes, up at 9.05pm and down at half past midnight - but eventful.  A dozen Mosquitoes attacked two aerodromes, Jagel and Westerland on Sylt, at low level, carrying drop tanks filled with napalm gel.

Of Miller's six going to Jagel in Schleswig, northern Germany, one did not return. As the log put it: ‘An explosion was seen by several crews about five miles west of the airfield which might have been due to an aircraft crashing.'

Miller's aircraft was one of three that could not drop both its tanks. He had to bring the one ‘hung up' back to base  -  with the prospect of it dropping at any time, and exploding."

That it didn't, he always contended, was "Miller's luck".

* The Victory Tests, England v Australia 1945, by Mark Rowe, available for $60 including post from cricketbooks.com.au