Did O’Keefe make India pay for stacking deck too much?
Garfield Robinson suggests excessive turn in Pune made Aussie spinners as effective as India’s master craftsmen
Ravichandran Ashwin is the best spinner in the game. Most cricket fans and pundits, I’m sure, accept that. He is the fastest to 250 Test wickets, reaching the landmark in 45 games compared to Dennis Lillee’s 48.
If he was previously thought to be ineffective abroad he was always a highly potent force at home, racking up 194 wickets from just 27 games, a staggering rate of over seven per game.
So how was he and his spin-bowling comrades outbowled on what is often referred to as a “raging turner” by a bowler little known outside Australia?
The surface in Pune for the first Test was dry and spun from the first hour. Both sides used at least one spinner to open the bowling in each innings, with Kohli using both Ashwin and Jadeja in Australia’s second.
Nobody would contend that Steve O’Keefe comes close in spin-bowling ability to Ravichandran Ashwin or Ravindra Jadeja, especially in Indian conditions. He is, after all, 32, made his first-class debut in 2005, and was never able to command a regular Test spot.
Meanwhile, Ashwin, forming a formidable pairing with Jadeja on home soil, has regularly overwhelmed visitors to their country. And yet it was the Australian, by some distance, who was the most effective spinner on show, capturing 12 wickets. Ashwin and Jadeja took 12 between them.
Always regarded as steady, nobody expected O’Keefe to do what he did in Pune. The headlines were supposed to have been grabbed by the Indian spinners, or even more likely by Nathan Lyon. But the left-arm spinner from New South Wales held a steady line, dropped it on a fullish length, and totally ransacked India’s batting.
He didn’t turn it as far as the other spinners. That, it appears, contributed to his success. For while the other bowlers mostly went past the bat, O’Keefe, bowling from wider of the crease and generating less turn, found the edge more often and posed more of a threat to the stumps.
Ordinarily, big turn is a desirable attribute for a spinner. And in normal conditions, Ashwin’s greater powers of spin, his carrom ball and his other qualities, would make him a more penetrative bowler. But with the surface facilitating turn, bounce and uncertainty, Ashwin’s gifts were somewhat surplus to requirements. O’Keefe’s turned out to be just right.
The left-armer was furnished enough assistance by the conditions, which when allied with his own qualities, made him even more formidable than the more famous bowlers on show.
On a very dry surface in Mohali in November 2015, South African parttime spinner Dean Elgar captured four first-innings wickets. In October 2015 at the P. Sara Stadium in Colombo, West Indies opener Kraigg Brathwaite dismantled Sri Lanka’s second innings with 6-22 from 11.3 overs.
Both specialist batsmen outbowled their specialist spin-bowling mates on pitches offering tremendous assistance. The conditions equalised the effectiveness of each bowler, granting the occasional spinner the potential to be as potent as the world beater.
Cricket is a funny game. Turn the ball a large distance and go past the edge; turn it only a few inches and find it. Which is the better delivery: the one that turns much or the one that turns little? Which requires more skill on the part of the bowler?
I doubt there has ever been a spinner who didn’t desire the ability to turn the ball huge distances. And yet many fine bowlers, like Indian-spinning great Anil Kumble, even though they elicited only a fraction of the turn others like Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne did. Kumble, once challenged on the nominal turn he generated, riposted that you only had to turn the ball just over two inches to hit the edge.
Who is the better swing bowler? Is it the one who swings it round corners and frequently beats the bat, or is it the one who swings it just enough to locate the edge. The ball didn’t swing all that much during some of the more amazing swing-bowling performances in history.
I have seen Jimmy Anderson move it a mile and evade the batsman’s blade, while Stuart Broad, at the other end, snatches a bagful of wickets while extracting much less deviation, just enough for the batsman to edge to the wicketkeeper or to the slips. In that kind of scenario, who exhibited greater skill?
Who is the better batsman: the one who gets close enough to a particularly auspicious delivery to edge it, or the one who, though trying his hardest to make contact, misses it and survives? Are you in better form when you manage to touch the great delivery and get out caught behind for a low score, or when you miss it and go on to make a big score?
O’Keefe does not possess exalted gifts. It’s possible he will never attain such heights again. India can choose to persist with their first Test tactic and manufacture turners for the rest of the series; turning pitches have served them well in the past. One loss does not mean it will be discarded. But sticking with the tactic means O’Keefe and Lyon would continue to be a real hazard, putting the hosts at serious risk of losing the series. The recently concluded England series was contested on usual Sub-continent surfaces and the home team triumphed convincingly. Given that, one would have thought that attempts at stacking the deck so much in the home team’s favour would not only be unnecessary but also unwise. “What you do when the wicket starts turning as much as they do,” said Rahul Dravid a few years ago, “you take out the skill factor almost. It becomes a lottery, a lot about luck and chance. “So from India’s point of view, if they back their skills on normal Sub-continent wickets that start off with a little bit of slow spin and deteriorate as the game goes on, I’d back them to win over four Tests. But make it a lottery and anything can happen.” Something quite unexpected happened in Pune. What will India now do to make sure nothing of the sort happens again?
Anil Kimble, once challenged on the nominal turn he generated, said that you only had to turn the ball just over two inches to find the edge