Lyon lauds unlikely 'coach' as he nears 500 club

Twenty years ago, the cricket world was absorbed by the race being run between sharply contrasting but equally enigmatic rivals Shane Warne and Muthiah Muralidaran to see who would become the first spin bowler to reach 500 Test wickets.

Ultimately it was the late leggie who scaled that peak four days and one Test match earlier than the unorthodox off-spinner, as they shared their respective glories during a celebrated series in Sri Lanka during March 2004.

Two decades on, a similar duel is being waged between Australia's Nathan Lyon and his India off-spin counterpart Ravichandran Ashwin, with the former expected to take the honours by reaching the rare milestone during the NRMA Insurance Test Series against Pakistan that starts at Perth Stadium tomorrow.

With an average of more than seven wickets per Test in his three outings at the venue to date, and with his current haul numbering 496, Lyon is likely to broach the benchmark ahead of Ashwin (on 489), with India's next red-ball outing scheduled for Boxing Day against South Africa.

But just as Warne and Muralidaran overcame the enmity of their playing days to forge a close friendship and add their names to the perpetual Test trophy contested by their two countries, so Lyon sees Ashwin as more inspiration than adversary.

"You look at Ashwin, he's a world-class bowler and somebody I've watched closely from the start of his career," Lyon said ahead of his return to Test cricket after suffering a serious calf injury at Lord's last June.

"We've gone head-to-head many times in different conditions around the world.

"I've got nothing but respect for Ashwin and the way he's gone about it.

"I've definitely learned from him.

"There's an opportunity to learn from the people you play against, and without knowing it he's probably been one of my biggest coaches in a way.

"It's pretty amazing to see we're both creeping up to that 500 mark, and we'll see where we end up.

"Hopefully at the end of our career we'll sit down and have a nice feed and a beer and talk about it."

That the duo who made their respective Test debuts in the same year (2011) and whose birthdays are barely a year apart – Ashwin turned 37 in September, Lyon 36 last month – are vying for such a rare honour in close proximity only underscores their joint status among the game's true greats.

Of the more than 3100 men to have represented their countries in Tests since 1877, only seven – less than 0.25 per cent, or around one in every 450 – have bowled well enough for long enough to claim 500 wickets.

The current global heavyweight of cricket having won this year's ICC World Test Championship and World Cup finals at India's expense, Australia will also become the first nation to boast three bowlers with 500-plus wickets when Lyon surpasses that threshold.

Warne (708) and his pace-bowling contemporary Glenn McGrath (563) are there, along with England pair James Anderson (690) and Stuart Broad (604) while Muralidaran (800), India's Anil Kumble (619) and West Indian Courtney Walsh (519) are sole representatives from their teams.

Having spent months on the sidelines recovering from the first injury setback of his 12-year Test tenure, Lyon maintains full faith in his fitness and has reiterated his hopes to continue playing at international level until Australia's next Ashes sojourn to the UK in 2027.

But he won't attach an end date nor a projected wickets tally to his remaining career ambitions.

"I'm not putting a number on it," he said when asked if he was targeting Warne's record as Australia's greatest-ever Test bowler.

"I want to play cricket for as long as I can.

"Haven't won (a Test series) in India, haven't won in England – that's two places that I want to do, so with the injury happening a couple of months ago I feel like there's a passion there to keep going and keep trying to get better.

"I've had the mentality to try and rehab this like no-one's rehabbed a calf injury before.

"I'm really proud of the work I've done personally, but also with the likes of Cricket Australia and Cricket New South Wales.

"I feel like we've done everything possible along the way to make sure we're in a really good spot physically, but also mentally as well.

"I'm feeling really confident, really happy with where everything is at and it's just about going out there and performing now."

Given the rarity of Lyon's impending achievement, it's difficult to reconcile how he might have 'flown under the radar' when discussions turn to the most influential cricketers of the past decade.

But long-time Australia and New South Wales teammate Steve Smith shows no such equivocation when asked about Lyon's place in the pecking order, describing him today as "a valuable, if not the most valuable member in this team for our attack".

And men's team coach Andrew McDonald cited Lyon's absence as a crucial factor in Australia's inability to convert a 2-0 lead after the first two Ashes Tests this year (before the off-spinner's injury) into their first series win in the UK since 2001.

"It was a huge loss when he went down," McDonald said of the Ashes campaign that finished 2-2 with Australia retaining the urn.

"It destabilised what we normally do.

"He's been down the other end to those quicks for 100 Test matches.

"He's important to the way that we want to operate – he can tie up an end and he can be aggressive when he wants to be.

"He makes that attack work, there's no doubt about that.

"When he wasn't there, we went through some periods of instability and we had to find different ways of doing things.

"I think he flies under the radar in conversations at times, but we're happy to have him every time he plays.

"I think people will reflect on (how good he is) when he does finally hang up the boots, they'll reflect on how important he was to this bowling attack.

"Internally we recognise that but externally, at times, I think sometimes he's not recognised as much as he should be."

Assuming Lyon adheres to his Test average on the usually fast bowler-friendly Perth strip and reaches 500 wickets this week, he won't be the youngest to have done so.

That honour belongs to Muralidaran who was a month shy of his 32nd birthday when he ripped a trademark off-break through Australia tailender Michael Kasprowicz's defence at his home ground in Kandy during that 2004 series.

Muralidaran can also claim to have climbed the mountain in significantly fewer Test outings than any other member of the exclusive club, having done so in his 87th appearance while wrist spinner Kumble is the second-fastest, taking 105 Tests.

But where Lyon differs from the other spinners who have crested the peak is he hasn't played the bulk of his cricket on sub-continent pitches where conditions suit his craft.

Nor does he boast the variety of deliveries available to wrist spinners, an armoury that ensured Warne remained a potent threat on tracks that offer pace and bounce rather than simply low, slow turn.

Lyon has reached the heights of few others on the strength of a highly repeatable stock ball he can land unerringly and unremittingly – only Kumble (32,961) sent down more deliveries than the Australian's current 31,422 to snare 500 wickets – to challenge batters' techniques and temperaments.

He has occasionally made reference to a variation modelled loosely on the 'doosra' made famous by a number of sub-continental off-spinners including Muralidaran, with Lyon's version of the delivery that supposedly spins from leg to off going by the typically understated alias of 'Jeff'.

However, 'Jeff' rarely appears in public and can claim responsibility for just one of the 496 Test scalps Lyon has claimed across 122 matches to date – South African Jacques Rudolph, who was pinned lbw at the Gabba in 2012.

"It's been his consistency, his subtle changes," Test keeper Alex Carey explained this week when asked how an Australian finger spinner has found such remarkable success.

"With the drop-in wickets in Australia there's really good grass coverage, so he's able to get the ball to grip and spin and the biggest one is the bounce he's able to get as well.

"For him it's turn, it's bounce and he can bowl that first session of a Test match and be really threatening."

It's perhaps a more instructive measure of Lyon's greatness to examine his returns in Australia, where finger spinners have historically found longevity and sustained success hard to come by.

Not only is his record of 238 Test wickets (at 31.4) the third-best return of any bowler in Australia behind Warne's 319 (at 26.4) and McGrath's 289 (at 22.43), but it represents almost three times the yield of any other finger spinner on the traditionally pace-dominated surfaces.

Even the second-placed spinner on that list, Bruce Yardley (79 wickets at 32.2), bowled off-spin from an elongated run-up at speeds verging on medium pace which enabled him to maximise bounce from pitches such as those in his native Western Australia.

"Anytime he gets bounce, it becomes very difficult for batters to be able to combat," McDonald said of his star spinner.

"He'll have men around the bat at times, and he brings the outside edge into play, the inside edge into the play – he can beat them on both sides of the bat.

"So it's an extraordinary skill considering he's just doing the work with the fingers.

"He's an incredible player and hopefully we'll see him for many more years to come."

Noting the importance of bounce to Lyon's bowling blueprint, it's self-evident the only series in which his strike rate – which sits at a wicket every 63 balls bowled across his career – has blown out beyond 100 are ones played on the most moribund surfaces.

And two of those, the 2014 campaign in the UAE (strike rate 220) and the historic tour to Pakistan of 2022, have been against Australia's opponent in the forthcoming three-Test NRMA Insurance series.

On each of those occasions, Pakistan's batters opted to play a patient game against Lyon's probing spin forcing him to send down 110 overs across two Tests in the first and a gruelling 219 overs in the three-match visit to Pakistan where Australia ultimately triumphed 1-0.

However, Pakistan's newly appointed head coach and team director Mohammad Hafeez indicated this week his batters would bring a more proactive mindset into this series and, when asked if they planned to take on Australia's record-breaking spinner, replied simply "we will".

"Definitely he is a great bowler, he has done a great job for Australia playing at home," said Hafeez, the former Pakistan all-rounder.

"Away he has always been a very handy cricketer to win matches for them.

"Obviously as a team from the sub-continent, we normally play off-spinners very well.

"In the last couple of encounters, we had a really high percentage of scoring runs against him and that will remain the same I believe, because these guys are really looking forward to that challenge.

"We know that Nathan Lyon is a great bowler … but as a team we are also confident we will take him on straightaway."

If that's how the visitors, whose most recent Test win in Australia came 28 years ago with their past 14 matches here delivering defeats, tackle their impending challenge there will be nobody more delighted than Lyon.

"If you look at their batting line-up, and I've played against a majority of those guys a number of times now, I think I know how they're going to look to attack me," he said this week.

"I've got my plans, but I've just got to go out there and play my role."

NRMA Insurance Test series v Pakistan

First Test: December 14-18, Perth Stadium (1.20pm AEDT)

Second Test: December 26-30, MCG (10.30am AEDT)

Third Test: January 3-7, SCG (10.30am AEDT)

Australia squad: (first Test only) Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Lance Morris, Steve Smith, Mitch Starc, David Warner

Pakistan squad: Shan Masood (c), Aamir Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Khurram Shahzad, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Noman Ali, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi