Comment: What Nathan Lyon’s axing says about the myth that selectors are too close to players

For the first time in 12 years, Nathan Lyon is fit and available but not in the Test team. But his stunning omission should end one long-held claim about the Australian selectors.

A few days out from the first Test in Barbados, Nathan Lyon was asked about how the Australian team’s coaches would deal with younger players like Sam Konstas as the side inevitably transitions towards a new generation.

Lyon strongly endorsed head coach Andrew McDonald, as well as the communication style of McDonald’s fellow selectors George Bailey and Tony Dodemaide.

The line of questioning then veered towards what Lyon made of the claim that selectors were too close to the players to make objective calls, as has been variously argued in recent years by Ian Healy, Darren Lehmann and Mitchell Johnson.

Lyon was having none of it.

“That’s the media getting that up. That’s fine with us. More than happy to have a round of golf with George or Ronnie (McDonald) or (assistant coach Daniel) Vettori,” Lyon told this masthead.

There have been suggestions that Australia’s selectors, including coach Andrew McDonald (R), are too close to the senior players to make the big calls. Picture: AFP

“Doesn’t matter if they’re coaching, everyone’s human and everyone’s allowed to have relationships with everyone. I’m the type of person who I want to be able to build that relationship with everyone and have those conversations. So that’s all media talk.”

And Lyon can now vouch for that through brutal experience.

Having been an immovable object – when fit – in Australia’s Test side for almost a dozen years, Lyon was dropped. And not just for any game, for the 100th Test of his extremely close mate Mitchell Starc.

Had the panel not made the call, no one would have batted an eyelid. Lyon was being attacked by the Windies but still taking wickets at 18.33 for the series.

There was no groundswell of angst on talkback radio or in comments sections. There was such a sense of surprise, perhaps shock, when Pat Cummins countenanced on match eve that this was even a possibility, that reporters on the ground were caught on the hop.

Nathan Lyon (R) was a surprise omission from the third Test. Picture: AFP

Before Lyon’s 100th consecutive Test at Lord’s two years ago – the match in which he pinged his calf in the outfield – Cummins said “he’s just so valuable to our team that I couldn’t imagine a side without Nath in there.”

Unlike when Shane Warne was dropped in the West Indies 26 years ago, there was no major urgency to make such a decision. Australia had already won this series when the tourists arrived in Jamaica.

The path of least resistance here would have been just to play Lyon again, even if there was a sense he wouldn’t have been needed much. The Aussies would have been warm favourites either way, and it would have saved unsettling the team’s most experienced player, who is just one Test wicket shy of drawing level with Glenn McGrath, which would leave him behind only Warne among Aussies.

And yet they still pulled the trigger, ignoring sentiment and the prospect of any destabilising aftermath, to pick the XI they thought was the best chance of winning this Test match, Australia’s first to involve a pink Duke’s ball.

Lyon (R) is just one wicket away from drawing level with legendary paceman Glenn McGrath in second on Australia’s all-time wicket-takers list. Picture: AAP

Whether it was the right call will be judged in hindsight. But it was undoubtedly a decision laden with integrity.

This panel has dropped Starc at two Twenty20 World Cups, regularly left out Josh Hazlewood in Asia, cut Steve Smith from the T20 setup, and dumped Alex Carey just one game into a 50-over World Cup.

Cameron Green was left out for the final Test of the 2023 Ashes, while these selectors eventually lost patience with a lack of Test runs from both Mitch Marsh and Marnus Labuschagne.

They consistently bypassed white-ball regulars Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa in Test cricket despite their keenness to play the format. Does that sound like a boys’ club?

Travis Head was left out for the first Test in India in 2023 despite a barnstorming home summer.

Cameron Green is the golden boy of Australian cricket, but even he has felt the sting of being dropped in recent years. Picture: AP

Since McDonald became the team’s full-time coach in 2022, pretty much the only current senior players who haven’t been on the end of disappointing selection calls are Cummins and perhaps Usman Khawaja, although the latter could argue he should have been considered for a one-day recall when dominating Test cricket.

Travis Head was sidelined early in Australia’s tour of India in 2023 despite a summer of blistering form. Picture: Getty

David Warner was given a relatively long leash at the end of his Test career, but if anything, Australia’s opening struggles since his retirement suggest that faith was justified.

Close enough to the players that they can have the tough conversations and not shatter relationships? You bet.

Too close not to make the hard calls? Hogwash.

LYON AXED IN 12-YEAR FIRST FOLLOWING AUSSIE SELECTION STUNNER

– By Daniel Cherny

National selector Tony Dodemaide insists the data-driven axing of Nathan Lyon for the Jamaica Test was a conditions-based “one-off” but concedes that the veteran off-spinner was disappointed after being omitted for the 100th Test match of close friend Mitchell Starc.

Lyon – the seventh highest Test wicket-taker in history – was sensationally dropped for the third and final Test against the West Indies as Australia recalled Scott Boland as part of a four-pronged pace attack.

Other than the three Tests of the 2023 Ashes that he missed through injury, it was the first time Lyon had been left out of the Aussie Test XI since Ashton Agar was preferred as Australia’s frontline spinner at the start of the 2013 Ashes.

Only once since then had Australia not played a specialist spinner in a Test: at Old Trafford in 2023 when Todd Murphy was left out to allow for the return of Cameron Green to play alongside Mitch Marsh.

Nathan Lyon had a wicket-taking impact in Australia’s triumph in the second Test. Picture: AP

Though the series has already been decided, the call to leave out a man with 562 Test wickets is arguably the boldest call made by this selection panel of Dodemaide, George Bailey and coach Andrew McDonald, and among the biggest Australian selection shocks since Shane Warne was dropped for the fourth Test in the West Indies 26 years ago.

Dodemaide replaced Bailey as the selector on-duty in the Caribbean ahead of the third Test, and told reporters through a fence out the back of Sabina Park that the decision to leave out Lyon had only been made on match eve, after Australian skipper Pat Cummins conducted his pre-match press conference.

“He’s disappointed because he wants to play every game,” Dodemaide said.

Nathan Lyon has been dumped by the Australian Test team for the first time in 12 years. Picture: Getty

“He’s a great competitor, and he believes he can be effective in any conditions, but he’s a team man as well. Understands the right thing for the team, and he’ll do his best to support the guys. But I said it’s a one-off. It’s no reflection on performance for Nathan, is simply the best way we think we can win this game.

“It’s not something we generally want to do, and, fair to say, certainly wasn’t front of mind when we first got here.”

Lyon, 37, took nine wickets at 18.33 across the first two Tests of the series. He had been targeted by the Windies, going at more than five runs an over, but had still managed to strike regularly.

While Lyon bowled just one over in the day-night Test in Adelaide last year, and wasn’t used at all against England in the pink-ball Test against England at Hobart in 2022, Dodemaide said that Lyon could still be effective in day-night Tests.

Australia has opted for a four-strong pace attack, picking the ultra-reliable Scott Boland. Picture: Getty

However Dodemaide said data supplied by team analyst Thomas Body showed that the pink Duke’s ball – used for day-night Tests in the Caribbean – has different characteristics to the pink Kookaburra used in Australia.

“(The) limited data that we have on particularly the pink Duke’s ball, we know that from the data that it actually behaves a little differently to the Kookaburra one, it doesn’t go as soft. The Kookaburra one tends to have a trough when it doesn’t move so much in those middle overs. That’s not the case with the Duke’s,” Dodemaide said.

“The history tells us that, and that’s been our lived experience when we’ve been here for the past couple of days in terms of the practice sessions that we’ve had. (There are also) longer nights here, the night sessions are genuinely night sessions.

“Those conditions kick in. We know that’s also very difficult for the batters as well. So, based on all of that, we thought that spin would not really have a significant part in the game.

“We’ve got a terrific analyst, Tom is a genius he’s brilliant analyst. And, and that was, that was quite compelling.”

Originally published as Comment: What Nathan Lyon’s axing says about the myth that selectors are too close to players