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Before Steve O’Keefe had even bowled yesterday, Shane Warne summed up the spinner’s perception problem.
Many cricket followers have wondered why, despite his tremendous record, O’Keefe has played only two Tests.
With 191 first-class wickets at an average of 25, his record is far, far better than any other spinner in the country, Test veteran Nathan Lyon included. When he and Lyon have bowled together for NSW in the Sheffield Shield, O’Keefe has, overall, been the more effective bowler.
But history shows us that the Australian selectors are not convinced just by numbers, particularly when it comes to picking Test bowlers. If Shield statistics were more heavily weighted in their decisions then Victorian seamer Scott Boland would not be in the current Test squad ahead of the far more accomplished Jackson Bird and Chadd Sayers.
Sayers clearly is dogged by the perception that he is not swift enough to trouble Test batsmen. His record of 145 wickets at 25 in first-class cricket is remarkable when you consider he is based on the batsman’s paradise of Adelaide Oval.
Sayers’ problem, though, is that he is a medium pacer, operating in the 125-130kmh range, and in the modern era there have been few frontline quicks who have entered Test cricket bowling at that pace and had consistent success.
This is not just an Australian bias either. Take, for example, Chris Rushworth the Durham seamer and former North Kalgoorlie star. Rushworth has been one of the top five bowlers in county cricket for the past three seasons, and has almost 300 wickets at 23 in first class cricket.
Yet he can’t even get a game for England’s A side, the Lions, seemingly because the England selectors believe his Sayers-like medium pace wouldn’t have the edge needed to cut through Test line-ups.
Sometimes, regardless of how well a cricketer performs at the domestic level, national selectors believe that their method simply won’t hold up in Tests.
Which takes us to O’Keefe and Warne’s telling comments. Early in the first session of yesterday’s SCG Test, Warne said on the Channel Nine coverage that he was looking forward to watching O’Keefe bowl.
He then offered a scathing assessment of the spinner by saying that he hoped he would “actually spin the ball” instead of just bowling straight and being “defensive”. Warne followed that up by stating that a Test spinner needed to do more than that.
When O’Keefe’s puzzling lack of support from the selectors has been discussed on The Roar and other sports sites in the past, it often has been suggested that O’Keefe has a perception problem. Apparently, he had been too outspoken on the domestic scene and had ruffled too many feathers.
O’Keefe certainly wouldn’t be the first player to be kept on the outer because of a personality problem – just ask England’s Nick Compton.
Yet Warne honed in on the perception issue that is more damaging for O’Keefe – that his bowling method is not suited to Test cricket, no matter how successful it may be at domestic level.
The same way that few medium pacers have had success in the modern era of Tests, spinners struggle to be effective in anything but helpful conditions if they don’t give the ball a rip.
Unless the pitch is doing the work for them, a Test spinner must be able to bamboozle the batsman by getting heavy revolutions on the ball and making their deliveries loop tantalisingly, dip sharply, swerve deceptively and spin appreciably.
Most crucially, a Test spinner must be able to defeat batsmen through the air, something which is particularly important on true Australian tracks. As Warne suggested, O’Keefe doesn’t fit this mold.
He does not get much work on the ball. O’Keefe favours a flatter trajectory and the odd delivery he does toss up for variety does not have the kind of enticing arc that Lyon generates.
Perhaps in recognition that he doesn’t boast the same attacking tools as a bowler like Lyon, O’Keefe maintains a straighter, more defensive line. With commendable accuracy and patience, O’Keefe attacks the stumps and waits for the batsmen to make a mistake, as we saw yesterday.
The SCG pitch for this Test is tailormade for Lyon and O’Keefe, offering more turn from day one than we have seen from any Australian surface in many years. While Lyon was flighting his deliveries and pursuing wickets like a strike bowler, O’Keefe more often was skidding balls in towards the batsmen’s pads in the manner we often see from slow bowlers in ODIs and T20s.
In the Sheffield Shield, a competition with very few world-class players of spin, this approach reaps success season after season. It may also work at Test level.
The problem for O’Keefe is that the negative perception about his defensive bowling means he may never get a proper run at the highest level to prove himself.