Ashes 2021-22: Nathan Lyon expects star all-rounder Ben Stokes to be part of England squad
Six weeks out from the first ball of the series against the Poms and there could already be an exciting twist in the offing that would instantly flip the script.
Cricket
Don't miss out on the headlines from Cricket. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Nathan Lyon has made the shock declaration that he expects England superstar Ben Stokes to be an 11th hour addition for the Ashes.
Stokes was not named in England’s Ashes squad due to leave the UK on November 4, and the champion all-rounder has been on the sidelines for months due to a finger problem and attending to his mental health.
However, Stokes who will forever haunt Australia with his miraculous tide-turning century at Headingley in 2019, has started batting again in the nets to open up the outside chance he might rush his comeback for the Ashes.
Catch all the ICC T20 World Cup action live & exclusive to Fox Cricket, available on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial today
Lyon is adamant Australia will once again come face-to-face with their nemesis.
“I’m expecting him to come. I’m expecting Stokes to be out here and, to be honest, I hope he is,” said the Australian spinner.
“You want to play against the best players in the world and Stokesy is the best all-rounder in the world. He’s an X factor, a game changer and you want to play against these players so I’m expecting Stokes to be here.”
No one took the Stokes-inspired Headingley loss harder than Lyon – who fumbled a run-out which would have won Australia the match and also had an lbw shout turned down because Australia had already squandered its DRS referrals.
It was peak Ashes heartbreak as England rose from the canvas on the back of Stokes to win the unwinnable Test.
Former Australian great Brad Haddin agrees with Lyon that Stokes will be here and said the series will grow extra life if he does.
Ashes needs villains, even if Stokes’ presence gives Australia something serious to worry about this summer.
“I tend to agree about Ben Stokes. I’ve seen a few things recently that he’s started to pick a bat up again and go through his drills. There’s still enough time for him to be a twist and it wouldn’t be an Ashes campaign without a hero or a villain or without a twist,” Haddin told the TopSport podcast.
“The theater is different about it. And I think we will see Ben Stokes at some stage and I think that for the series is great news. He’s a performer under pressure and he loves nothing more than beating Australia.”
Meanwhile, Lyon has played down the concussion which ruled him out of a NSW practice match this week and declared he is a certain starter for the Blues’ season-opening Sheffield Shield match next week at Drummoyne Oval.
Lyon suffered the minor knock trying to stop a boundary in the outfield.
“I ate a bit of turf, but it’s just precautionary and our medical staff have been fantastic,” he said.
“I was diving out there and my chest grabbed the grass, I head butted the ground. I stopped the boundary but just had a bit of claret coming out. It was an over the top way to get out of the last two days of pre-season.
“I’m fine. I’m ready to go.”
Boy wonder’s race to prove Ashes fitness
A key cog in Australia’s Ashes preparations has been rescued for next week, with NSW and Victorian Test hopefuls to square off in suburban Sydney.
Border closures forced the likes of Marcus Harris to watch on helplessly while other opening candidates like Usman Khawaja staked their Ashes claims in Adelaide, with it unknown whether NSW and Victorian players would get any match practice.
But some key stars will finally get their opportunity in back-to-back Sheffield Shield matches at Drummoyne Oval and then a return bout at the MCG.
News Corp understands the first fixture will start on Wednesday October 27 at Drummoyne Oval, with the match also a vital tune-up for bowling matchwinners Nathan Lyon and James Pattinson.
Will Pucovski is expected to miss at least next week’s Shield match following his concussion, and it’s unknown whether he will return in time for the second fixture in Melbourne.
The fact the likes of Lyon in particular will get two proper hit-outs before the Ashes is crucial for Australia, particularly given the majority of the squad will return home late from the Twenty20 World Cup in the UAE with no red ball preparation.
Gold Coast’s Metricon Stadium has been earmarked to be England’s training and preparation base for their quarantine stay.
Meanwhile, the addition of a fast bowler to Australia’s selection panel could be timely for Pat Cummins as the clock ticks down for a decision on the next Test captain.
Former 10-Test quick Tony Dodemaide says he sees no barrier to exclude a candidate like Cummins from the captaincy conversation despite the fact Australia’s last pure fast bowling skipper was Ray Lindwall, who took the role for a one-off Test in the 1950s.
Dodemaide doesn’t officially join the three-man selection panel of chairman George Bailey and coach Justin Langer until next month and made it clear he wants to reserve judgment on the credentials of potential successors to current captain Tim Paine until he has his feet under the desk.
But the presence of a fast bowler on the panel certainly gives Dodemaide an important personal insight into the considerations selectors will have to make at the end of the Ashes summer about whether to saddle their most important wicket-taking weapon up with the responsibilities of leading the nation.
Dodemaide played in the 1980s when pace bowler Geoff Lawson was considered the most adventurous and one of the most admired Sheffield Shield captains of the decade and is open-minded to the theory of Australia’s next captain being a quick.
“No I don’t think any particular role in a team excludes someone from having a leadership position,” said Dodemaide.
“My experience in cricket and in business as well is you want as many leaders or people that have leadership characteristics in a team, whether they have the titles or not.
“I don’t think that necessarily precludes any particular type of player.
“Tim is a great example of that himself. The view probably was a few years ago that it was too much to expect a keeper to be a captain as well, and he’s done a terrific job. There’s absolutely no preconceived ideas at all coming into the role.”
It’s expected Paine, who turns 37 in December, will retire at the end of the Ashes, and as it stands it would appear the race to succeed him will be a showdown between Cummins and Steve Smith.
Former champion fast bowler Glenn McGrath has warned strongly against burdening Cummins with the task, but there are obvious hesitations about Smith given his history of being sacked from the captaincy following Sandpapergate.
Revealed: Australia settles on final piece of selection puzzle
Former Test all-rounder and widely experienced administrator Tony Dodemaide is Australia’s new cricket selector.
Dodemaide, 58, will replace former chairman Trevor Hohns who has retired.
He will be part of a three-man panel including new chairman George Bailey and Test coach Justin Langer.
Dodemaide played 10 Tests as a pace bowling all-rounder from 1987-92, none better than his first against New Zealand at the MCG when he scored 50 at No 9 and took 6-58.
He was a long-time teammate and great friend of colourful Victorian great Merv Hughes who also had a stint as a Test selector.
In replacing Hohns, Australia has plumped for a man with a similarly dignified style which masks a resilience he will need in a challenging era.
Dodemaide has held a series of senior administrative roles since retiring including chief executive of the West Australian and Victorian Cricket Associations.
He was also director of cricket for the Lord’s-based Marylebone Cricket Club.
Australia advertised for the position, which drew a wide range of applicants, including several former Test players who were interviewed for the role.
Bailey has not accompanied the Australian T20 team to the UAE, meaning Langer, as the man on the ground, will be a crucial voice in team selection discussions.
Dodemaide joins the panel as an important era looms with captain Tim Paine not far from retirement and several key positions up for grabs in Australia’s Test match top order.
Personality and profile can help cricket regain its lustre
– Ben Horne and Peter Lalor
The resignation of Earl Eddings must be a trigger for Australian cricket to find a charismatic leader capable of taking control of a divided sport.
Cricket Australia has made many changes since the Sandpapergate scandal but it is yet to rectify the fact it’s an organisation still widely distrusted by players, states and stakeholders.
There is suspicion lurking on every corner and cricket is crying out for a figurehead who can break down these barriers, unite the game and get it firing from all cylinders.
For too long Cricket Australia’s administration has seemed so frightened of saying the wrong thing that it’s stopped saying anything at all and the country’s one true national sport is desperate for a new approach that can inspire confidence.
Cricket’s players’ union has reinvigorated itself by effectively splitting the role of Chairman in two to have Shane Watson come on board as a figurehead and spokesman. Cricket Australia could do worse than consider blowing up its Governance model and following suit.
A universally respected figure like Steve Waugh or Belinda Clark might be convinced to come on and represent the board, if by splitting the role of Chair it meant that person wouldn’t have to be bogged down by the onerous time commitment of dealing with cricket’s minefield of international relations.
New chief executive Nick Hockley is doing a fine job and having saved the past two summers from financial disaster, couldn’t have done much more from an operational point of view since coming into the hot seat.
However, standing up and selling the game isn’t at this point Hockley’s strong suit and Cricket Australia needs to compliment his excellent skills in other areas with a statesman or woman who can radiate the confidence and stature the sport should hold.
Someone who can stand up and strongly represent the sport on its bad days, and cut through in singing cricket’s virtues from the rooftops on the good days.
No one is suggesting the administrators should be the stars of the show, but it doesn’t help for them to be anonymous either, and cricket’s board could benefit from an injection of personality and profile.
Cricket is guilty of too often choking itself with processes and secrecy, and for the game to truly flourish as it should, a leader is needed who can bring the game’s many moving parts along for the journey.
Chair forced to quit as states revolt
Cricket Australia’s board is in crisis mode with chair Earl Eddings resigning ahead of Thursday’s Annual General Meeting.
Eddings withdrew his bid for a second term to head off any humiliation.
Western Australia’s board is understood to have decided it would join NSW and Queensland in opposing the long-serving director’s re-election.
With three states against him, Eddings did not have the numbers to survive.
Eddings said his resignation was in the best of interests of the sport.
“It is my sincere hope that following my resignation the State and Territory associations can unite and work together in the best interests of cricket, allowing the focus to return to the sport ahead of the 2021-22 season” Eddings said in a statement released by Cricket Australia.
It is a disastrous situation for the board which had originally backed his bid for another term. Two directors, however, got cold feet on the eve of the meeting.
A temporary chair will have to be identified by the nine remaining directors who had supported Eddings re-election because he’d argued that he needed more time to groom a successor.
News of WA’s defection reached the states on the east coast this morning and Eddings is understood to have been contacted by that state.
NSW board was disappointed that Eddings had not groomed a successor to take over from him after placing him on notice that it had concerns about this issue in 2019.
Queensland decided recently that it could not support another term as a change in direction was needed.
Despite the two states making their objections known the board unanimously supported Eddings decision to continue after he agreed to appoint a successor and stand down at an undetermined time to “ensure a smooth transition of Board leadership”.
The decision caused so much angst among the states that a compromise proposal which would have seen Eddings stand down at the end of May 2022 was rejected.
The chair subsequently lost the support of two of his own directors – Greg Rowell and Mike Baird – a fact which was relayed to him this week.
The Australian broke the news of Eddings eroding support on Tuesday.
More to come
MAX-FACTOR: STAR’S SIMPLE PLAN FOR WORLD CUP SUCCESS
He is both the man critics love to curse and the hero kids want to be, but now Glenn Maxwell has the chance to keep everyone happy and cement his legacy in Australian cricket.
Already immersed in tournament conditions on the eve of the Twenty20 World Cup, Maxwell stands out on stalks as the most in-form batter on the planet in an Australian squad where he’s surrounded by players who are out of form, injured and insecure.
It’s an inescapable fact that if Australia is to break its sorry record in T20 World Cups, Maxwell has to deliver.
The 32-year-old has learnt from previous Cups that it does him no good to overhype the occasion and put pressure on himself to be ‘the man.’
But he understands the magnitude of his influence, and he is ready.
“I’m trying not to think about it so much as trying to lead the way. It’s just trying to go out there and execute,” Maxwell told News Corp.
“I know that if I have carried this form over from the IPL into the World Cup, I know our team will have success.
“I know every time I can play my role to the best of my ability, there’s generally a good chance our team is going to have success.”
In his past five IPL starts, Maxwell has scored 51 not out, 40, 57, 50 not out and 56 in a role where rather than having a set batting position, he is unleashed around the end of the power play after six overs so he has the time he needs to leave his mark. The key now is to translate that to the World Cup, where he’ll be lining up against Virat Kohli not with him.
As a young star at the 50-over World Cup in 2015, Maxwell produced two clutch innings which helped set-up Australia’s historic triumph on home soil. But in the latest ODI World Cup in 2019, Maxwell blamed himself for Australia’s semi-final demise.
“I felt like I was 100 per cent to blame and I was looking around the change room going, ‘I wonder if they’re thinking the same,’ I wonder if they’re looking at me thinking, ‘if only Maxy had have turned up this tournament,” Maxwell told Neroli Meadows’ podcast.
Maxwell is man enough to admit that there are times in his career, like that, where his performances have warranted the intense criticism that has come. But there are plenty of other occasions where Maxwell’s pay packet and thrill-a-minute playing style has seen him unfairly cast as the convenient scapegoat.
The all-round superstar showed great courage to acknowledge he was struggling with his mental health when he took a break from the game two summers ago, and he now has a new way of preparing his mind as he gears up for this latest World Cup, starting on October 23 in the UAE.
“I try and take the event out of it,” Maxwell said.
“I feel like if you get overhyped by the event, which I probably have in the past, you can say, ‘this is a World Cup, I’ve got to focus and I’ve got to do extra and all this stuff.
“I know the path that (thinking) leads me down. I now literally try and take every game of cricket exactly the same and don’t overhype or overemphasise any tournament or game.
“I feel it adds unnecessary pressure when all-in-all it’s a ball coming down that you’ve just got to try and hit. If you make it any worse than that, it makes it more difficult.”
In recent weeks, AFL entertainer Eddie Betts and NRL magician Benji Marshall have bowed out greats of their respective codes. But above all, perhaps their most unique legacy is they were the heroes kids wanted to be playing in the backyard.
Perhaps this is the greatest testament to Maxwell as well, only he still has chapters left to write in his cricket career.
He might not have played the Test matches he could have or perhaps should have, but Maxwell is king of the kids for his era of players and an inspiration to the next generation largely due to the fearless way he lights up a crease which has changed the game.
Maxwell, a man hardened by the reality that cricket can be a brutal rollercoaster ride, is humbled by this rare honour that cannot be measured in runs or trophies.
“I find that really cool, Maxwell said. “I still remember trying to be different heroes back in my backyard and trying to imitate them while playing cricket with my brother in the backyard or my best mates down the road.
“It’s one of those things that when you hear, you feel like it makes everything all worth it.
“When you get sent videos of kids reverse sweeping … it warms your heart. They make you feel really good inside.
“To have fans out there that are trying to imitate you and trying to be you in the backyard is something you never thought would happen as a kid because you were always trying to imitate other people.”
Maxwell hasn’t given up on Test cricket, and there is already a school of thinking he could offer Australia’s incomplete batting order an X-factor at No. 6 this Ashes summer. Certainly a bumper World Cup would give him a momentum that selectors could not ignore.
More Coverage
Originally published as Ashes 2021-22: Nathan Lyon expects star all-rounder Ben Stokes to be part of England squad
The key detail which could make Smith the greatest again
Steve Smith has regularly spoken about the phenomenon of ‘losing his hands’ and then ‘finding’ them again in the never ending pursuit of his nirvana at the crease. He may have rediscovered the detail which placed him among the world’s best batsmen.
India coy on star – but Aussies aren’t buying into mind games
Australia has brushed off any attempts at ducks and drakes from the cagey India despite the tourists springing a surprise while remaining coy on the status of top order star Shubman Gill.