Kerry James O'Keeffe (born 25 November 1949) is a former Australian

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er and a current cricket commentator for

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. O'Keeffe played 24 Test matches and two

One Day International A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...

s between 1971 and 1977.

Playing career

He was a

spin bowler Spin bowling is a bowling technique in cricket, in which the ball is delivered slowly but with the potential to deviate sharply after bouncing. The bowler is referred to as a spinner. Purpose The main aim of spin bowling is to bowl the cricket ...

, bowling

leg break Leg spin is a type of spin bowling in cricket. A leg spinner bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action. The leg spinner's normal delivery causes the ball to spin from right to left (from the bowler's perspective) when the ball bounces on the ...

s. He never quite lived up to early expectations of being the next great Australian leg spin bowler, taking 53 wickets at an average of 38.07. He made his Test debut against England in the Fifth Test of the 1970–71 Ashes series after taking 6/69 and hitting 55 not out in the New South Wales match against the tourists, but did little and was dropped. Recalled for the vital Seventh Test on the spinning SCG pitch he took 3/48 and 3/96, but it was not enough to win the game and save

The Ashes The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, '' The Sporting Times'', immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, its first ...

. He did, however, have some success with the bat, averaging 25.76 and being called upon to open the batting in the second innings of the Centenary Test. One statistic that O'Keeffe himself uses to demonstrate his lack of penetration with the ball is that he is the bowler with the highest percentage of wickets out 'caught' in the history of Test match cricket (44 out of 53 wickets, 84%). This is typical of his commentating style of making fun of his bowling abilities. He often talks of an incident during the 1972 Australian tour of England, when he appealed against a batsman for

leg before wicket Leg before wicket (lbw) is one of the ways in which a batsman can be dismissed in the sport of cricket. Following an appeal by the fielding side, the umpire may rule a batter out lbw if the ball would have struck the wicket but was instead in ...

, and the umpire turned him down, saying that the ball was "doing too much", meaning that the ball was spinning so much that it would have turned away from the stumps. O'Keeffe said that the umpire's comment was a sarcastic jibe at his inability to spin the ball, something he likes to mock himself about.

Post-playing career

O'Keeffe had varied careers post-cricket including as a commentator on ABC Radio. He was known for his humorous anecdotes, told in the manner of an after-dinner speech at a cricketers club, and his distinctive laugh. He especially seemed to enjoy working with overseas commentators such as India's

Harsha Bhogle Harsha Bhogle (born 19 July 1961) is an Indian cricket commentator and journalist. He’s widely known as a "voice of cricket". Bhogle has cemented his reputation as being a personality in the global cricket broadcasting industry. Early lif ...

, whom he enjoyed confusing with his colorful Australian language. However, when he concentrated on the game, he showed insight born of a career at the highest level together with study of the statistics and history of the game. In 2004, he released his autobiography '' According to Skull''. He has also released a number of CDs containing some shorts of his commentating antics. On 27 December 2013, while providing commentary on the Melbourne Boxing Day Test between Australia and England, O'Keeffe announced his retirement from commentating after the Sydney Test in January 2014 (O'Keeffe had accepted a redundancy from the ABC). However, O'Keeffe returned to cricket commentary in December 2016 as part of

Triple M Triple M is an Australian commercial radio network owned and operated by Southern Cross Austereo. The network consists of 40 radio stations broadcasting a mainstream rock music format and 5 digital radio stations. The network dates back to th ...

's new cricket coverage. On 13 July 2018, it was announced that O'Keeffe had joined the

cricket commentary team from the 2018–19 season. O'Keeffe's commentary during the Indian tour of Australia in 2018 received backlash from the Indian team management and on social media for being derogatory towards Indian players. A day before the fourth Test, it was reported that Indian broadcaster

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

had decided to black out O'Keeffe's commentary by not using Fox Cricket's commentary feed when he is on air.

References

External links

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Kerry O'Keeffe's Biography on ICMI Sport Speakers

Kerry O'Keeffe tells joke during Aus v Sri Lanka Final ODI at Gabba 2006
{{DEFAULTSORT:Okeeffe, Kerry 1949 births Living people Australia One Day International cricketers Australia Test cricketers Australian cricket commentators New South Wales cricketers Somerset cricketers World Series Cricket players Australian cricketers Cricketers from Sydney D. H. Robins' XI cricketers