An aggressive late-order left-handed batsman and a bowler of slow left-arm wrist-spin and googlies (of two varieties), Walsh was brought out of Australian club cricket in 1936 to play as one of the professionals in the side taken by the Nottinghamshire cricket impresario Sir Julien Cahn to tour Sri Lanka.

Cahn's sides played some first-class matches on this and other tours and in English seasons across the 1930s and over the next three years, Walsh took more than 600 wickets for Cahn's sides, touring New Zealand in 1938-39 and playing three seasons in England.

In 1946, with Cahn having died, Walsh returned to England and became for the next 10 years a professional with Leicestershire, regularly being the county's highest wicket-taker and enlivening many innings with a robust approach to batting.

He bowled left-handed wrist spin, with two googlies: "one, which could easily be detected, to lull the batsman into a sense of security, when he would unleash the other, which was calculated to deceive even the greatest batsmen".

Walsh played only two first-class matches in Australia, both for New South Wales in the 1939-40 season.