England at risk of a kick from curiously underrated 'Goat' Nathan Lyon
“Garry” was the perfect nickname for Nathan Lyon. It embodies his everyman charm and the unassuming qualities of an assiduous artisan.
It was borrowed from the Aussie rules player Garry Lyon and heard at every Test, first from the wicketkeeper Matthew Wade, bellowed in a broad vowel-mangling Tasmanian drawl, elongated to last several seconds. The last syllable of his common cry, “Nice, Garry”, was delivered with a cheery, congratulatory uplift and so tickled Australian crowds that almost every dot ball the off-spinner delivers is honoured with a mass chorus of the refrain.
But it is not Lyon’s nickname anymore. His team-mates have appropriated another and not from a former Melbourne centre half-forward this time but from that most famous and treasured of all sportsmen, Muhammad Ali. Lyon is now known as “Goat”, for “greatest of all time” in recognition of the 269 Test wickets that have made him, almost by stealth, the most successful finger-spinner in Australian Test history.
Bowling finger spin on traditionally hard, true Australian pitches is an unforgiving occupation and Lyon has become the first of the breed to take 100 wickets at home. Yet in his six-year Test career, the former horticulture apprentice, who combined net bowling with his job as an assistant curator at the Adelaide Oval before his selection for the Redbacks, has been cursorily underrated.
He missed the first two Ashes Tests in England in 2013 after losing his action while trying to bowl quicker and flatter in the Caribbean but came back and dismissed Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Jonny Bairstow on the first day of the fourth Test at Chester-le-Street.
It barely turned so early in the match but both Bell and Bairstow mistimed their shots, playing at the ball too early, demonstrating Lyon’s least conspicuous weapon, a mastery of flight.
“He gets the ball up in the air, he spins it and he’s got a good wrist,” says the former England and Surrey off-spinner and the craft’s greatest champion, Pat Pocock. “The wrist is the forgotten area of spin bowling.
“Bishen Bedi was a great spin bowler and his arm used to come over at roughly the same speed every time. But the way he put his wrist into it or held it back was the difference between the ball hanging in the air or hurrying on to the batsman. Deception of flight is the forgotten art of spin bowling.”
Lyon bagged Pietersen’s wicket four times in eight Tests, once when he feathered an edge to the keeper but the other three were caught in the deep. “When Pietersen goes out there he is just arrogant and belittling of Lyon’s bowling and Lyon keeps getting him out,” said Ashley Mallett, the third of the quartet of Australian off-break bowlers to take 100 Test wickets.
The English press box, however, was as dismissive as the dressing room. Derek Pringle in these pages called him “the non-turning off-spinner” and Nasser Hussain after Lyon’s five for 50 in England’s second innings at the MCG wrote: “[He] is just a good, honest professional and to get bowled out by him on a three-day Melbourne pitch is unacceptable.” No doubt England’s batsmen were complicit in some of his 44 wickets at 29.84 in 13 Ashes Tests but so is the English game, says Pocock. “They’re not such good technical players because they don’t play against quality spinners that often. They’re great at whacking it but they don’t actually play the bowling, they don’t control it as well as they used to do.”
Lyon has a mentor and dedicated spin coach working with him throughout the season, thus avoiding the curse of “ad hoc coaching” that Pocock feels “simply does not work”. John Davison, who played for Victoria, South Australia and Canada, has helped to develop the bowler’s ability to give the ball even more of a rip with his rock climber’s fingers to impart the overspin that generates uncanny bounce.
The evidence of all that advice and dedicated practice was never more apparent than this spring in Bangalore, where Lyon spun out India for 189, taking a career-best eight for 50 with balls that leapt and turned. He even duped the masterly Virat Kohli, seducing him to pad up to one that drifted and fizzed into his shin.
Ever since Mike Hussey handed on the mantle of singing the team’s victory song to Lyon in 2013, the off-spinner has been an integral part of the squad and later that year in the back-to-back Ashes series he made himself an indispensable part of the side. For a man who never makes a song and dance about anything it is a stretch to imagine him atop a changing-room table belting out “Under the Southern Cross I Stand” but if he is to sing this Australian summer, it won’t be without a significant if doubtless unheralded contribution with the ball. You don’t get to be the Goat without that responsibility. Nice work, Garry.
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