For a seam bowler who admits speed is not his forte, Fergus O’Neill certainly makes fast impressions.

In his maiden playing stint abroad, for Nottinghamshire earlier this year, O’Neill only had 28 days. By the time his UK visa expired, he had 21 Division One wickets and club captain Haseeb Hameed, the 10-Test opener, lauding his “massive heart”.

From Lucknow last week, the 24-year-old watched the live stream of Notts lift the County Championship silverware for the first time in 15 years.

“I was glad to play a small role at the start to get the ball rolling,” O’Neill told cricket.com.au ahead of Victoria’s Sheffield Shield season kicking off this weekend, “but I can’t take much credit for it.”

Trent Bridge has a long history of welcoming Victorians – Keith Miller played an exhibition match for the club in the late 1950s; more recently, David Hussey, both Pattinson brothers and Peter Siddle all had stints there – and O’Neill is hopeful of heading back to the club next winter for a longer spell after the UK Government loosened visa requirements for overseas players.

It surprised no-one back at Victoria’s headquarters in St Kilda that he had thrived in England. Since his debut in 2022, only one Australian quick has taken more first-class wickets than his 134 at 20.34 (Nathan McAndrew, who has bowled 185 more overs, has 171 victims over the same span).

It has left many wondering how the slippery seam bowler from Melbourne’s inner north-west might fare in Test cricket. O’Neill has given it some thought too. At Nottingham, he picked the brains of his replacement, Pakistan veteran Mohammad Abbas, who has snared 100 Test wickets at 23.18 bowling at a similar pace.

The pair spoke in depth about their craft when O’Neill spent time training with the county before his return home. Abbas offered advice about his seam position and the advantages of occasionally bringing his wicketkeeper to stand up to the stumps. They were subtle skills Australia were confounded by in 2018 when the right-armer took 17 wickets in two Tests against them on bone-dry UAE pitches.

Abbas clinches player of the series in style

“He was showing me footage of him getting a 10-for (against Australia in 2018),” O’Neill said of the 35-year-old Abbas.

“If conditions are in my favour, I can just come in and do what I do. But when you go to foreign conditions, or conditions that aren’t quite in your favour, how (do you) get that edge?

“There’s all little intricacies and little niche things that I can do potentially with my lack of ball speed and have a different way of going about it. To speak to him, someone that has thrived in those conditions, that was very interesting.”

‘Your margin for error was the size of a handkerchief’ // BCCI

O’Neill concedes his first attempts to put some of Abbas’ wisdom into practice were not entirely successful as he returned 1-66 from 19 overs for Australia A in a four-dayer against an India A side featuring five Test batters playing in their home conditions. 

“It felt like your margin for error was the size of a handkerchief,” he said. “But it’s just interesting how there’s different ways to go about it and maybe different expectations. For a game at the MCG or at Trent Bridge, when it’s seaming around, my expectation might be to take lots of wickets.

“Then on those pitches, maybe it’s to give ‘Murph’ and ‘Rocc’ (Australia A spinners Todd Murphy and Corey Rocchiccioli) a break, to hold the board and try and build some pressure.”

Now back at home after his busy summer in England and India, O’Neill is desperate to add ‘Sheffield Shield champion’ to his resume.

That Victoria has not won a trophy in his first three seasons rankles him. They made a Shield final in his first summer, losing to Western Australia in ’22-23, and they are the only team to have won more than a dozen regular-season games since the start of that summer.

The Vics open their first-class campaign against South Australia, the reigning champions in both formats, in what will mark O’Neill’s return to Adelaide Oval for the first time since they lost the One-Day Cup final there in February.

“Away trips are a massive one for me. Going to someone else’s backyard and doing them there, I love that,” said the reigning Sheffield Shield Player of the Season. “There’s something about the pressure and points on the line that I enjoy, playing for keeps.

“You’ve only got to walk through the hallways here to see the success that Victoria have had. It’s something we haven’t had in a while. I know our side’s a bit younger and maybe it hasn’t quite been our turn yet to do that.

“But we’ve won a lot of games and been very close. We’re not going to have ‘Bazza’ (Scott Boland) and ‘Harry’ (Marcus Harris) and Pete (Handscomb) forever, we’ve lost ‘Sidds’ (Peter Siddle, to retirement), so I feel like it’s time for us to start something new.”

O’Neill crowned Shield’s best with stellar 38-wicket season

O’Neill cites Beau Webster’s ascendance as an example of the importance of simply banging the door down in the Shield. He hopes to tread a similar path to a Baggy Green.

He knows his route into Test cricket is more likely to come on the kind of seaming surfaces he has thrived on in his first three Shield seasons for Victoria. At the MCG, for instance, he has taken 31 wickets at 12.22 in six first-class matches. Scott Boland’s Test debut during the last home Ashes in 2021-22 came on the back of similarly impressive numbers.

“It’s a bit uncharted. I feel like in Australia especially, we haven’t really had someone that bowls like me,” he said. “You look at some other countries with (Vernon) Philander, Abbas, even (Chris) Woakes, they’ve had success bowling similarly to me.”

O’Neill cannot match others competing for an international fast-bowling berth for pace. But those who have watched his rise point out that he has held his own on flatter surfaces.

His durability, having missed just three Shield matches (one due to Australia A duties) since his debut, is another notable advantage he has on many of his contemporaries.

“The perception is his pace (is not high enough) – but it’s not like he hasn’t played a lot of cricket where good players have played against him,” Victoria coach Chris Rogers told cricket.com.au.

“He continually amazes people, and he continually proves people wrong. That’s a lot down to his intelligence and his competitive spirit.

“He’s the kind of guy where, if you play a trial game, I don’t think you’re getting a lot out of him. But when he pulls on the big V of Victoria, he morphs into someone else.

“For the same reason, if he got a game for Australia, he won’t be one of those ones who’s caught in the headlights. He’ll absolutely embrace it and I think he’ll give the best version of himself.

“Clearly, he’s a better bowler when there’s something in the wicket. But 99 per cent of bowlers are. If they (the Test team) do play on some pitches that offer a bit of sideways movement, I think he’d do an incredible job.”

Abbas, who this year took his 800th first-class wicket, has likened his style of bowling to skipping stones across a lake. “Some will hit the water, skim across for a bit and then just drop in,” he told ESPN earlier this year. “Others will skim in such a way that it looks like they are gathering pace off the water.

“Off the pitch, seam bowlers are more effective because batters don’t know which way the ball might come off it and how quickly it skids off it.”

‘He continually amazes people’ // Getty

Abbas very nearly bowled Pakistan to victory in his long-awaited Test comeback at Centurion in December last year, bowling 19.3 overs unchanged in the fourth innings and taking six wickets.

It will not have escaped the attention of O’Neill, nor national selectors, that South Africa looms as Australia’s next overseas Test assignment, a mooted three-match series pencilled in for September-October 2026. The following year, Trent Bridge, where he took 14 wickets in three games, hosts the third Ashes Test.

O’Neill is bullish that bowlers of his ilk could have a role to play on those types of tours with Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Boland all in their mid-thirties, while Pat Cummins, who turns 33 next year, is currently managing a back injury.

“I feel like with the Big Three, you can take them to any conditions, and they’ve been arguably the best ever,” he said. “I’m not sure if we’re going to have the luxury of that in the coming years for Australia.”

“If we do, that’ll be great, but it might look like more of a horses-for-courses (approach). Whether that’s me and Xavier Bartlett play on a Bellerive wicket or a spicy one at Centurion, then somewhere else (on a flatter pitch) you go with Lance Morris and Callum Vidler.

“That’s been the blessing for Australia – if it gets flat, you’ve got the ball speed and the skill of (the current Test bowlers), and if it’s seaming around, they’re just as good.

“That’s been the luxury we’ve had in Australia. But I’m not sure if that’s going to continue when they’re done.”