Cricket: Let’s say a prayer for Nathan Lyon

You can no longer see the cathedral from Adelaide Oval, but you can still watch Nathan Lyon.

Nathan Lyon celebrates his six-wicket haul at Adelaide Oval yesterday. Picture: Getty Images

You can no longer see the cathedral from Adelaide Oval, but you can still watch Nathan Lyon.

In his 81st Test, he is perhaps the nearest thing Australian cricket has to an institution — recognisable, durable, reliable. As the first Test threatened to slip away from his team altogether yesterday, he kept them in touch — they were still holding on at the close.

Notably, Lyon is the only Australian player remaining from the corresponding Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test four years ago, when he took 12 wickets, seven of them after tea on the final day to secure a memorable victory.

Here the task was different, the need for patience greater. It had taken Lyon 20 overs to make his first breakthrough the day before; he did not strike again yesterday until his 33rd over; he had a stumping missed, an lbw and a short leg catch granted then rescinded. He’d have been running his hands through his hair had he any left.

The lot of the slow bowler in such circumstances is thankless. He must lead and support, penetrate and contain. Lyon had no Marnus Labuschagne to complement him, as in the UAE, and was pitted against batsmen who learn to play finger spin with their rusks.

But having at length dismissed the world’s best batsman on Saturday, Lyon became the first bowler in the match to get Cheteshwar Pujara’s better, after 450 balls. From his day’s work he extracted five for 74, 18 of these slogged in an over by Rishabh Pant, who he dismissed soon after.

He did not make this look easy. Lyon makes nothing look easy, with his pipe cleaner man physique, the little towel in his permanently scuffed pants worn like a tradie’s toolkit. Instead he creeps up on statistics and taps them politely on the shoulder, yesterday passing Bob Willis’s 325 Test wickets, taken in nine more games.

Of indeterminate age to look at, Lyon has just turned 31. His Cricinfo profile image is old enough that it shows him with tangled mop and a slightly startled expression, as though surprised by the necessity to be photographed, and the company in which he has been gathered.

Among Australian cricketers over the past seven years he has been the most underestimated, not least by himself — unassuming, unostentatious, takeable for granted in the best way possible, by his sheer consistency.

Not unappreciated mind you. Lyon’s useful undefeated 24 on the second day was cheered to the echo. Through the filter of the stumps mics as he bowled yesterday could be heard a ceaseless chorus of encouragement; as he grazed at fine leg between overs, he met a non-stop demand from young fans with paraphernalia to autograph and phones to pose for. With a wave of his hand, he acknowledged his retinue’s grateful applause as he concluded his spell.

Only half a dozen slow bowlers have now taken more Test wickets than Lyon. As it happens, the spinner who ranks ahead of him is in this match, his head-to-head rival.

Behind his shades, as if attempting to go incognito, Ravi Ashwin wheeled away until 42 of the day’s 90 overs were of spin.

What Ashwin did was underline Lyon’s excellence, extracting comparatively slow turn from the same pitch and less bounce. He obtained two wickets, and might have had a third had a difficult short leg catch offered by Peter Handscomb stuck. But the drop-in pitch is playing no real tricks. The deviation is consistent, the footmarks are shallow, and nothing is keeping low.

So there remain glimmers for Australia. As often when his place is threatened, Shaun Marsh played with some little skill after tea. He might have dragged Mohammad Shami onto his stumps towards the end, but the cricket gods winked and he survived.

Elsewhere, the recently muted form of Mitchell Starc continued. His knots were down. He looked a little ginger. There were sets of byes down the leg side, which Tim Paine might as well have tried shooting out of the sky like clay pigeons for all the hope he had of stopping them.

At one point in the morning, a drive from Lyon bisected the bowler and Starc at mid-off. Starc took some jogging steps towards it but slowed as Hazlewood took up the chase from wide-on most of the way to the boundary. Paine then shuffled Starc to cover point, where he caught Ajinkya Rahane’s reverse sweep off … Nathan Lyon.

On the day, that was to whom and to where it all went back. And for all the abiding anxiety around wear and tear on Australia’s gilt-edged pace attack, it is Lyon whom his team would most struggle to replace at present.

The only other spinner in Australia with more than 10 first-class wickets this season, Queensland’s Mitchell Swepson, is paying nearly 50 runs for each of them, while the enigma of Ashton Agar continues. So on Lyon’s narrow shoulders much weight bears. The selectors might be well advised to drop in at St Peter’s and offer a prayer that nothing untoward happens to him.