Lyon the Goat grazing on records

Nathan Lyon is quietly establishing himself as one of the greatest exponents of off-spin in Test cricket history.

Nathan Lyon outside the Goat Tavern in Kensington. Picture: Getty Images

Just along the Kensington High Street from the team hotel is an old English pub called the Goat Tavern that’s been a favourite drinking spot for Australian coaching staff of eras past.

It’s a modest establishment in a part of town that features a royal palace, a row of international embassies and lantana-like infestation of Lamborghinis, mostly shipped in by Arab billionaires keen to have their own car handy while on summer holidays.

The unassuming pub would be a fitting spot to celebrate should Nathan Lyon, who has 352 Test wickets, take four or more at Lord’s this week and move past Dennis Lillee (355) into third position on the all-time list behind Glenn McGrath (563) and Shane Warne (708). An almost apologetic figure, the offspinner has snuck up the list of all-time Australian wicket takers and ambushed the opposition.

All eyes were on Steve Smith at Edgbaston while Lyon quietly did what his species are wont to do.

Smith is zeitgeist. He’s a Twitter trend. He’s the mini-series everybody binge watches. The colour everybody is wearing. The podcast everyone is listening to.

Lyon is an offspinner.

Even when The Goat (greatest of all time) had his moment in the sun there was a sense of irony there. The wags catching on to Matthew Wade’s “nice Garry” and running with it a few summers back. Did anybody notice that he took eight of the 11 English batsmen in the first Test? The only three to survive unscathed were wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes.

Lyon loves the smell of an Englishman, having often made his bread from their bones. In 19 Ashes Tests he has 74 wickets at an average of 28.21.

Lyon moves under the radar and has for too long been underrated. In Ashes past, Derek Pringle called him the “non-turning offspinner”.

Nasser Hussein blasted England batsmen for daring to be his victim.

“He is just a good, honest professional and to get bowled out by him on a three-day Melbourne pitch is unacceptable,” he said.

Selectors appeared to be reluctant to pick him for much of the early part of his career, their eyes wandering but eventually returning to the reliable man from Young in NSW.

Maybe that is why he still doubts himself.

Australia needed to bowl England out on day five to win the first Test. It was spinning and all eyes were on Lyon who does not have a great record in such situations.

He didn’t sleep that night, but he did take 6-49 to win the match and when it was done tears of relief welled in his eyes. Taciturn and phlegmatic like the Australian farmers he grew up among, he churns on the inside.

There’s a little more respect for him these days. Joe Root acknowledges that it was Lyon who was the chief destroyer in the first Test.

“I thought in the first innings we played him very well, and then as the conditions came more into his favour with the scoreboard pressure (Australia) had made it a lot easier for him to operate,” he said. “It’s a different pressure bowling it like that and he dealt with it very well. It’s fair to say, bar Jason (Roy), he bowled us out. So credit to him.

“We’ll have to make sure that if we find ourselves in a similar scenario throughout the four games we try and combat that a little bit differently, being a little bit smarter, trying to take those men around the bat out of the equation a little bit more.

“But it’s how you do that with minimal risk, which is always the art of batting especially in the fourth innings of the game — against a high quality spinner like Nathan.”

Root presumably absolves Lyon of the Roy dismissal as it was an act of suicide not homicide.

Langer was another slow one to realise how good Lyon was.

“Like a few of our players, like Steve Smith, I didn’t realise how good Nathan Lyon was until I took over coaching the cricket team,” he admitted after the second Test. “You see him on telly, yeah Nathan Lyon, offspin bowler, but the last 12 months or so I just can’t believe how good a bowler he is. He’s a brilliant bowler, such good control, he spins, he gets some bounce, great fielder, really good in the team, he’s the songmaster, so that tells you something about his character. He’s a gun bowler. Three hundred and fifty wickets, that’s an incredible achievement isn’t it?”

New Zealand’s Dan Vettori (362 wickets) is the only finger spinner not brought up on the dust bowl pithces of the subcontinent to have more wickets than Lyon and there are only three with more than the Kiwi: Muralitharan (800), Sri Lanka’s Rangana Herath (433) and Harbhajan (417). Tim Paine estimates the 31-year-old has another 10 years left in him. It is unlikely, but if he does …

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