Nathan Lyon: The outsider Goat called Gazza
Lyon wasn’t supposed to take 500 wickets as an off-spinner using ‘cricket’s rubbish skill’
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Nathan Lyon is standing in the Lord’s long room. This is not where players usually stand. Why would they want to be in a crowd when waiting to bat? They are usually on the boundary, or in the change room. The long room is about watching, not playing.
But Lyon is there because of his understanding of the law, a rare injury, and his determination. It will end up being the second most interesting thing that happens in the Long Room during this Test. But this one tells you a lot about Lyon.
He could have decided not to bat with an injury. One that will end his run of 100 straight Tests, the sixth-longest streak in cricket. He also could have stayed in the change room and tried to hobble out. But again Lyon decided to be somewhere he shouldn’t.
Nathan Lyon was not supposed to be in that Long Room, in the same way he was not supposed to play for Australia. And he certainly wasn’t supposed to take 500 wickets as an off-spinner using ‘cricket’s rubbish skill’ and play 100 straight Tests. None of this was supposed to happen, but none of that stopped Nathan Lyon.
It’s worth mentioning how much of an outsider he was. At first geographically. Lyon grew up in a place called Young. A small town in regional New South Wales. It wouldn’t be fair to call it the middle of nowhere, as Wagga Wagga is near, and plenty of Test cricketers have come from there. But Young is small, the current population is less than 8000.
And it is not famous for professional athletes, outside of Rugby League. In fact, before Lyon, it was really most known for the Lambing Flat Riots where white gold miners attacked the local Chinese workers. In cricket and everything else in Australia, you want to be in a major city for access to training and help.
Young is nowhere near Sydney, and to even drive there you have to go around the Blue Mountains, so essentially drive away. That made it basically impossible for Lyon to travel to Sydney for cricket.
So his family took him to Canberra. That was only a two-hour drive, so enough they could go down and back when Lyon needed to be there. It was still not ideal, but this young batter - he was at the time - needed to be in a bigger cricket set-up.
Lyon started turning up in the nation's capital around the peak of ACT cricket when the Canberra Comets were allowed to play in the 50-over competition. They drafted in some stars, like a non-peak Merv Hughes, but also had a young Brad Haddin.
But by the time Lyon is of senior age, Canberra is relegated to second tier again. This meant that Lyon had to make a choice. So he went to Adelaide instead of Sydney, where South Australia promptly overlooked him despite being a poor team, and he ended up as a curator who played as an amateur in club cricket.
That is where Darren Berry, the former Victorian keeper who was coaching South Australia, was told the kid on the roller could bowl a bit, so asked him to do some in practice. He claims two balls in was enough to know that Lyon was something else.
If that wasn’t weird enough, Lyon would end up as the leading wicket-taker in the Big Bash - the early one before it became a league - that first year. At the end of that, he was in their shield team, and his fifth first-class match was a Test. It was eight months after he was found rolling pitches.
Australia were used to picking spinners from nowhere on a whim, what was one more? But this was different, his first ball takes Kumar Sangakkara, and he added four more. It was a hell of a start.
Two years later when he had proven to be the best spinner had found since Warne, Australia dropped him twice. He was clearly their best option, and yet still, found himself outside the team. Then coach Mickey Arthur was concerned about his growth as a cricketer.
Then Arthur got fired, and Darren Lehmann - a close friend of Berry - took over and he dropped Lyon after he took his first seven-wicket haul for Ashton Agar, who was just another punt that went wrong.
But as late as 2017, Lehmann says Lyon is not a good Asian bowler. Some of that was just a hurt coach, but there is an element of truth. Lyon was good, but there was a feeling he couldn’t step up mentally for the last innings, and that he wasn’t good in Asia.
There is truth to both those things, but the reason was technical, not that he was soft or robotic. Lyon is an overspinner bowler, and he is tall. His superpower is the drop and bounce he gets when bowling. This is why we know his name. But it does mean that he is better earlier on, and unlike other finger spinners not as dangerous at the end. He is a bowler who doesn't take a lot of LBW or bowleds compared to most offspinners in the world.
So Lyon had to fight what got him into Test cricket and work out a new way. It wasn’t easy, or quick. But you look at him in the fourth innings over the last few years and you see how much better he is at the end of games now.
When he started he was far less like a normal bowler, so as he develops he becomes more like what Australia want. Yet his main talent is that he is an all-innings and pitch threat. Unlike many offies, he doesn’t need to be up against left-handers to be good. Compared to Ashwin and Swann, he’s still not the southpaw destroyer.
But it means he is a wicket-taker against all batters on all surfaces. Saeed Ajmal is the only offspinner better against righties. And that is doosra-related. But Lyon is nicely in the middle of the offies, a long way from Swann and Perera, southpaw slayers.
But you look at Lyon, and he averages almost the same in Australia as he does in Asia. That shows you how good he is as a bowler in Australian conditions.
But let me show you this way. Lyon averages just slightly more than all spinners in Asia, confirming the thoughts of many in Australia that he doesn’t step up there as much as they need. But look at what he does in Australia compared to all other spinners.
He has over 50% of spin wickets in his era in Australia and at half the average of every other spinner in the world. This isn’t really normal. Lyon’s record is not hanging in at home and cashing in when travelling, like many SENA spinners, it is destroying at home and holding on in Asia.
That said, there is one way that Lyon really does it hard. Australia play India a lot, not as much as England, but like right up there. And Lyon has bowled the majority of his deliveries to Indian batters, and you can see that by his number of wickets.
Look at how often he has bowled to Cheteshwar Pujara, this would be the 3rd longest marriage in Hollywood. And right behind him is Virat Kohli as well. That is a lot of balls to two players with huge records against spin. Joe Root is there as well.
But the Pujara record is the most interesting. Because Pujara doesn’t have a huge average against him. After almost 1300 balls, Lyon has at least played him out for a draw. No small thing against a player of this quality.
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