Has Steve O’Keefe been hard done by?

On 23 February 2017 the year’s first Test between Australia and India began in Pune, India. Many expected it to be the first of four straight defeats for the Australian side in a four-test series.

Three days later Australia emerged from the match victorious, defeating the home side by 333 runs chiefly due to Steve O’Keefe’s 12-70.

Four months after that, O’Keefe was left out of the Australian squad’s tour of Bangladesh in favour of Ashton Agar and Mitchell Swepson. Head selector Trevor Hohns said, “Whilst Steve O’Keefe bowled well in Pune, he did not maintain this level in the remaining matches of the series and we believe the timing is right for Ashton to enter the set-up and test his all-rounder ability.”

Steve Smith said he too was disappointed in O’Keefe’s bowling in the later matches, adding, “He’s getting a bit older now and our next tour back to India is in four years’ time and we’ve got to find the right group of guys that are going to be there for that series.”

It was a rapid descent for someone who had put Australia in the box seat to defeat India in India for the first time in over a decade.

O’Keefe admittedly didn’t have as much luck with the ball in the next three Tests, two of which Australia lost. He took 1-40 and 2-36 in the second game, helping bowl Australia into a winning position until the batsmen stuffed it.

He went for 3-199 in the third when every specialist bowler went for over a hundred runs, and he took 1-75 and 0-22 in the fourth Test, a game again lost predominantly by the batsmen.

He didn’t have much luck with the bat either. Something not often discussed is how poor O’Keefe’s batting at Test level is – he has a healthy first-class batting record, averaging 27, but a shoddy Test average of just eight.

There were plenty of times in India when a little more starch from O’Keefe at the bat would’ve been worth its weight in gold. Mind you, you could say the same about a handful of others, too.

Perhaps noteworthy is that in April 2017 O’Keefe was fined for making inappropriate comments while drunk at a Cricket NSW function. This was the second time O’Keefe had been in trouble for unbecoming conduct; he was fined for abusing a security guard in August last year.

But O’Keefe isn’t the first Australian cricketer to struggle with poor behaviour – indeed sometimes Australian selectors have picked players who have had indiscretions on their record. O’Keefe, however, doesn’t seem to have delivered on that.

(Image: AAP Image/Paul Miller)

Various other spinners have been preferred over O’Keefe over the years, including Xavier Doherty, Ashton Agar and Michael Beer, all of whom had vastly inferior records.

Was it because of his incident history? Cricket Australia certainly hasn’t said that it is.

Is it his attitude? Do they suspect he’ll never recapture his first-class form with the bat at Test level? Are the selectors just mean spirited?

We don’t always know why selectors make certain decisions. Sometimes it’s easy enough to guess, but at other times it seems to defy all logic.

But is it fair that his Test career should be seemingly over at only 32? O’Keefe is a spinner – a breed that traditionally enjoys a lot of success later on in life – and he almost brought us an incredible series victory in India. Dave Warner was far more responsible for our series defeat than O’Keefe.

Maybe he’s just not as awesome as the people who replaced him, then – Ashton Agar and Mitchell Swepson.

Ashton Agar is 23 and has taken fewer than three wickets per game at first-class level. He has two first-class centuries with a batting average of 26. He’s a talented player who is mostly fine but who has some extremely good days. He would walk into the current West Indies side.

Australian selectors have had their eye on Agar a long time. He was thrust into the limelight with his shock selection in the first Test of the 2013 Ashes series, almost winning the game with the bat but then helping Australia lose the second Test with the ball.

Mitchell Swepson is a leg spinner from Queensland, one of the hardest gigs there is. He has taken 41 wickets in 14 games at 32, averaging 11 with the bat. Shane Warne is a big believer in his talent – but, mind you, Shane Warne was at least partly responsible for Michael Beer’s Test career.

They were picked over not just O’Keefe but also Fawad Ahmed, who has taken 169 wickets from 53 games at 30.78 and has a batting average of 10, and Jon Holland, who has taken 164 wickets from 52 games at 33.06, including 50 wickets last season, and has a batting average of 16. Both men are over thirty. There’s also Adam Zampa, our resident one-day spinner, with 83 wickets from 30 games at 46 and a batting average of 22.

(Image: AFP/ Marwan Naamani)

Agar’s been around for a long time. He’s done some good things. He seems like a nice guy. But he hasn’t won as many first-class matches with the ball as O’Keefe, Ahmed or Holland. Swepson looks promising. But he hasn’t played that much first class cricket.

Both tick a big Greg Chappell box in that they’re young. Both tick a selector box in that their first-class stats aren’t that great, so if they come out of it well, the selectors will look like geniuses, and if they fail, the selectors can say that they’re ‘only young’.

I think the selectors have a dream of playing four fast bowlers, and Agar will allow this because he’s an all-rounder – except Agar isn’t really an all-rounder. You can shut your eyes and say he is, but if you average 26 with the bat, you’re not an all-rounder; you’re a decent tail-ender.

O’Keefe was hard done by. If he was dropped for non-playing reasons, fine, but if that was the case the selectors and Smith should have had the decency to say so.

If they didn’t take him, Holland at very least deserved his spot over Agar. The Victorian has said no-one told him why he didn’t get a game, and I think most Australian cricket fans would be interested to hear the reason as well.

Good Australian spinners don’t grow on trees – especially not spinners who win you games in India or ones who take 50 first-class wickets in an Australian summer. Australia found some, but now they’re chucking them away.

Unless we have a culture shift and start treating our spinners with more respect when they’re no Shane Warne, we shall forever remain a second-rate cricketing nation.