Steve O'Keefe – the man who stopped the Indian juggernaut

Steve O' Keefe ambles in around the wicket, and pitches the ball on the line of the off-stump. Virat Kohli expects the delivery to turn away from him and shoulders confidently. But the ball instead keeps its line and slides straight on crashing into the stumps. Steve O' Keefe, until yesterday an unheard of name in India, just like that took out the last of India's hopes of an Eden Garden-esque comeback – with a straight delivery.

Two Steves, however, came together to script a magnificent performance for the visitors to end their 13-year drought to win a Test match in India and infuse real hope into dreams of conquering ‘the final frontier 2.0’. While Steven Smith’s performance was expected or at least not-so-surprising, it was Steve O’Keefe’s bowling performance – 12 wickets giving away 70 runs - that proved to be India’s undoing. 

Although Indians are known to be the good players of spin, their struggles against quality left-arm spinners are pretty well-documented. In 2012-13, when England trampled India in India for the first time since David Gower’s side of 1984-85, Panesar grabbed 17 wickets at 26.82 and was the perfect ally to Graeme Swann. It was his 11 for 210 in Mumbai that helped transform the series in favour of the visitors after India had won the opening Test in Ahmedabad.

Monty obviously had the wisdom to share and Cricket Australia brought him on as consultant to help O’Keefe in the run-up to the series. O’Keefe, who represents Sydney Sixers in Big Bash League, was pulled out from the tournament so that he could concentrate on his bowling for the India series.

Especially in the second innings when the pitch was doing their bidding, Jadeja was spinning the ball by miles, while O' Keefe looked at spinning it just enough while pitching it up and in the line of the stumps. That's what led to his haul of wickets.

India now have a task at hand, but have little legroom unlike the previous opponents they faced. Apart from O' Keefe, Australia possess what the others did not have – a fast-bowling duo who can keep at it for long hauls -  Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood unlike the lone rangers that the Kiwis and the English brought here. Nathan Lyon appears to be the one weak link in this attack, but even he has proved capable of moping up the tail in double-quick time. It all depends on how India go about the series from here – rank-turners or five-day pitches? Whom to attack, and whom to play out? Meanwhile, they just have to pray that Virat Kohli's failure was one-off and not the end of the prophesied inevitable lean patch and also hope that David Warner does not find his feet too soon.