'Result wicket without a doubt' - O'Keefe

Even if Steve O'Keefe does not play this week, he should be able to command a handy fee from Cricket Australia for the title of 'day/night Test consultant'. No one in the squad knows the vagaries of the pink ball or Adelaide quite like O'Keefe, who has bowled, batted and fielded in all three of the floodlit Sheffield Shield fixtures here.

In keeping with his affable persona, O'Keefe joked about plying the captain (his former housemate) Steven Smith with free coffees in an effort to sneak into the side. However, he also acknowledged that a pitch prepared with the preservation of the pink ball in mind is likely to help seam and swing as well as spin throughout the Test.

"I think that's a result wicket out there without a doubt," O'Keefe said. "For guys to make runs, I think it's going to be significantly harder than what we've seen in the last two Tests. I think the ball will nip around a fair bit with that extra grass coverage. That certainly doesn't happen out there a lot. With the pink ball, due to its characteristics, it swung a lot as well so I think that will be prevalent the whole game and it also spun from ball one.

"It's going to nip around at night depending on the dew. It might slide on, it might spin, it might not but I think in regards to the ball holding up, leaving that extra bit of grass on it certainly did help when we had to play here and kept the ball in as good a nick as possible while still retaining some of its characteristics. Getting the ball to reverse, we've been able to do that here. To be able to get the ball to move off the seam, when it's hard it does and it still swings so in my opinion, this is the best ground to play with the pink ball."

An evenly-grassed Adelaide drop-in pitch has offered more spin than other strips around the country, which have tended in recent times only to take turn when deteriorating. Deviation was available from the centre of the wicket too, presenting a greater challenge for batsmen than those surfaces where it is largely a case of being wary of the footmarks. These reasons encouraged selection chairman Rod Marsh to inform O'Keefe that the national panel wanted to "cover all their bases."

"We've seen in the past, the last two games that we have played out there, that it offers the seamers a fair bit but it also offers the spinners a little bit off the straight as well off the good part of the wicket," O'Keefe said. "I think it was even turn, it wasn't drastic, but here in the past generally you would have to wait for the wicket to slow up or break to get that spin,

"Here it had a bit more of that extra grab because of the thatch grass so it was a little bit different to what I'm used to. You combine that with playing under lights, it's a completely different Adelaide Oval to when you're playing during the day, so there's a few things that selectors will have to weigh up in regards to which team they'll go for."

Having slogged through Brisbane and Perth on pitches far less helpful than they had any right to imagine, New Zealand's bowlers will also be happy that something more equitable is being cooked up in Adelaide. Their arrival on Monday afternoon was that of a team growing in confidence, something O'Keefe said the hosts would need to be mindful of as they seek to close out the series.

"No doubt New Zealand has a very good bowling attack and we've seen how good their bowling is as well, but I think the focus for us will be on what we do really well and how we can use those conditions to best suit our team," he said. "Starcy was outstanding. A lot of these guys have played cricket on this with the [New South Wales] Blues and they're aware of how the conditions play. So the focus will be on being aware of what they do well and focus on what we do well."