Australian quick Fergus O'Neill's four-week stint at Nottinghamshire ends with them at the top of the Division One table – how close is he, realistically, to going up against England in the Ashes?
Brett Lee, Shaun Tait, Ben Hilfenhaus and Jhye Richardson. All impactful Australia Test quicks, all winners of the Don Bradman Young Player of the Year Award.
Now, another winner of this prodigious award could join them. With the County Championship finishing its fourth weekend, Fergus O’Neill’s time with Nottinghamshire is drawing to a close. He will leave with them top of the Division One table, having been arguably the competition’s player of the season so far.
Read more: No fifties, 34 wickets: County side win inside two days despite being skittled for 136
Twenty-one wickets – two clear of anyone else in the top division – at an average of 18 speak to his incision, an economy of 2.67 to his control, and scores of 50 and 42 to his all-round game. As Australia edge towards the culmination of the axis of Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, O’Neill looks primed to slot into their fast-bowling battery.
Whilst O’Neill’s name will have been unfamiliar to most English fans at the start of the season, the 24-year-old signed on a short-term deal ahead of the arrival of Pakistan’s Mohammad Abbas, and has been a regular feature near the top of Australia’s domestic charts in recent years.
In the 2024/25 Sheffield Shield he snared 38 wickets at 21.07 apiece, and was duly crowned the player of the season. The year before? Forty wickets at 17.25. Only Nathan McAndrew, with 111, has taken more Sheffield Shield wickets than O’Neill’s 105 since his first-class debut in October 2022.
Also read: Fringe England quick builds recall case with second five-for of County Championship season
So why has O’Neill yet to achieve higher honours, barring a solitary Australia A cap against the England Lions earlier this year? Australia’s pace depth plays a part, with the big three regularly around and several other options available, including the likes of Scott Boland and Michael Neser. O’Neill also entered professional cricket relatively late. Born in Tauranga, New Zealand, he moved to Australia when he was young and spent his formative years as a ‘tradie’ (landscape gardener) in Melbourne. O’Neill says it gave him “a good little perspective of what I could be doing if I wasn’t playing cricket.”
And then there’s the pace question. Nudging the gun at around the early to mid-80s, O’Neill’s method thus far has been to build pressure with a tight line and length at an awkward release point from his 6ft-plus frame, rather than to blow batters away with pure speed. But Boland’s success shows that speed isn’t everything, and O’Neill is looking to do the same.
Speaking about O’Neill, his fellow Victorian and recently retired teammate Peter Siddle, said: “We speak about pace a lot,” said Peter Siddle, O’Neill’s recently retired Victoria teammate. “But we also speak a lot about consistency and building pressure and he’s probably the best at that in Shield cricket.”
O’Neill’s are attributes that, as shown in a Nottinghamshire shirt, should make him ideally suited to English conditions. When the 2029 Ashes roll around, O’Neill will be 28 years old, theoretically in his prime, with valuable experience under his belt.
“I’d like to think I’d be well equipped,” he told talkSPORT’s Following On podcast. “If it’s over here I’ve already played two games at Test venues now, so trying to tick those off as I go along. The stumps are definitely more in play here, which probably suits me as opposed to back home.”
As O’Neill’s four-week stay in Nottingham comes to an end, he has sent a strong message to the Australian selectors and a warning shot across England’s bow.
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