Kerry O'Keeffe

When you express opinions, as I do, its only reasonable that you accept some will agree and some won't. As a writer, regardless of the form, some will like what and how you say your piece and others will disagree. The trick is to refrain from the personal and that's not something the lazy, untrained mind can do readily. Playing the ball and not the man is a fine principle based on objectivity but achieved less often in modern media reporting which craves sensationalism as success; followers or "likes" as a benchmark which equates to quality. Van Gogh sold one painting before he died and Mozart never won a prize for his music. It is on the basis of playing the ball I write the following.

I have always disliked Kerry O'Keeffe's on air persona. There, I've said it.

In detail, I abhor the buffoonery; the steady supply of one liners; the set up gags and constant bad puns that would have me criticised about my own table at the Sunday roast. To be accused of excessive Dad jokes is to be condemned to belonging to a past age. Like a Peter Jackson trilogy, a little of Kerry O'Keeffe, cricketer commentator, goes a long way. My taste was always more Roebuck than O'Keeffe.

I'd certainly love, however, to have a few beers with Kerry or sit and chew the fat at the boundary. Perhaps its just about context.

The thing is, I am in a very small minority in holding such an opinion. I know this. I had it confirmed in a small way through social media pages yesterday and in contact with others as we motored about the country side and spoke in shops or cafés. People love Skull. Newspoll have provided him with thrashings of the beige bard Benaud and all other commentators on the Australian cricket scene. He didn't just come out on top in these popularity contests, he even flogged daylight into second place.

How does this very average Test cricketer leave the game behind and return nearly twenty years later and become such a superstar, than even on-air doyens at the ABC have to acquire a taste for him but then become warm friends by choice?

Certainly it's a mistake to read him for a fool. He is far from that. In more serious moments, the research he does shows through the mask of his comedia dell'arte and stats and theories are placed cleverly into the on air conversation. At these points, he adds to the game by exposing his cricket heart.

O'Keeffe has bought a new sound of summer to the Australian audio lexicon. It may be less mellifluous than the broadcasting genius McGilvray but it is certainly as popular.

It's also a mistake to think he is the jester first and the cricket fan second. Not likely. O'Keeffe may have had moderate returns in his 24 Test matches but his ticker is not in question. When Rick McCosker was given the Iron Man facial by Bob Willis in the Cententary Test, there was no stopping the Hurstville lad from opening the batting in the second innings to allow the batting order to stay intact. He was elevated to the Test team on the basis of a brilliant grade career with St George and strong performances in the NSW blue cap. Once there, he was among giants but couldn't make the spot his own against the likes of Terry Jenner or Ashley Mallett. His bowling just didn't have the sting to worry men at Test level.

He was no mug with the bat but had spent most of his career at eight, where his sole half century was the 85 he made in a 168 run partnership with Rod Marsh at the Adelaide Oval against New Zealand. 25 was a good average for a number eight in 1974.

What never diminished was his passion. He may have been just an ordinary Test cricketer but as was fairly pointed out to me to me to me yesterday, he played twenty four more times for Australia than 99% of us. My Baggy Green dream was his reality. One exchange that exemplifies his passion for the game and his love of being an Aussie, is this exchange with former English Test player and now BBC commentator, Jonathon Agnew. The setting was the SCG in early 2003 and Steve Waugh was settling over his bat, ready to face probably the most famous ball in Ashes history ... including one bowled to a little chap at The Oval at 1948.
Agnew: Well, what high drama we have here. Kerry? What will he do?
O'Keeffe: He'll go for it!
Agnew: But he could come back tomorrow and wait for a trundler down the leg side ...
O'Keeffe: Stuff tomorrow Aggers. Tomorrow is for silver medalists. We're Australians. Poms come back tomorrow. Australians only want the gold and we want it now. He'll go for it!

If I was to find a way of accepting his mistake in taking a joke too far at the expense of the situation in middle, his passion might be it.

In the mid 1990's, I returned after four days, to pick up my eldest son - then a budding keg spinner - from a cricket camp at the University of New England in Armidale. For forty minutes I watched my son float down leggies, sometimes beating the bat and other times going for a run to find his ball. Rarely in that forty minutes did the attention of the head coach wander far from him. There were minutes where he stopped and was shown an arm position or the action at release and others when a joke was shared. All of this attention came from the head coach; a man my son called Mr O'Keeffe. A teacher of some note myself, I recognised passion and the willingness to share it, as one does the light from a one candle to another candle. The place gets brighter but the original candle loses nothing in the sharing.

The reality that my son became a fast bowler bears nothing more than comic irony on the anecdote that O'Keeffe would surely adore.

At the same age as my son had been as he sent down his leg breaks from chubby fingers in Armidale and had someone else talk to him about commitment and the importance of team and loving the game, I had sat with my great uncle at Hurstville Oval and watched O'Keeffe break records set by Bill O'Reilly in the 1940's. In those days, my great uncle Allan Byrne, had opened the batting in O'Reilly's premiership sides and later, after his death, Allan would be named in the St George team of the 1940's in Mike Cowards substantive book marking the Cententary of probably the greatest cricket club in Australia. Allan saw the similarity in the bowling action but noted O'Keeffe wore a smile where as the other O wore a scowl.

Twenty four hours ago, I posted frivolously on the Facebook equivalent of this website, expressing the opinion that O'Keeffe's departure would be the highlight of my summer. It was spontaneous thing, intended as humour but with an edge O'Keeffe would have avoided had he said it. I was wrong and I am indebted to the gracious manner in which I was approached and asked to reconsider what I had posted. It wasn't done by open comment but by message. The writer and I didn't agree on all aspects but he earned my respect. The writer, by the way, wasn't Kerry O'Keeffe! I suspect O'Keeffe might not have liked what I said nor the intercession. He'd have copped it on the chin.

You see, it's not about how good you are or even if what you do is liked. It's really about the quality of your humanity, your passion and your willingness to absorb the failings in others knowing that your next failure isn't far away.

Kerry O'Keeffe has all of those qualities.

It has been in that light, the concepts expressed in my opening paragraph and the love and passion of one lone supporter of the retiring commentator that this post has been written. You see, I do admire what Kerry O'Keeffe has achieved and more importantly, I admire the man, not the least for knowing when to call it quits.

Unfortunately, it doesn't change my opinion of his commentary style. I prefer substance, not entertainment. He was capable of substance but wasn't incisive or perhaps more fairly, wasn't incisive often enough. I only wish he was more often quoted for his Steve Waugh comment than for the frog joke.

As far as commentary cups of tea go, he wasn't mine.

What you drink is your business.