When cricket legend Shane Warne retired from the game in 2007, Australia found itself confronted by an issue it hadn’t faced in a long time.
The country realised what a dearth of quality spin bowlers it harboured, outside the man in question.
Warne was an outlier, of course. The best to ever plie his trade.
But there really was no one banging down the door to usurp the Spin King once he decided to vacate the throne.
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Scores of tweakers were given a chance to cement their spot but the Aussie selectors could never settle on one. Nathan Hauritz, Steve O’Keefe, Xavier Doherty, Jason Krejza, Michael Beer, Brad Hogg. The list goes on.
Even Fawad Ahmed had a visa rushed through so he could be available for selection, only to never get a baggy green. Such was the extent of Australia’s plight.
Selectors got so desperate they plucked a groundsman out of the Adelaide Oval, flew him to Galle and handed him a cap in 2011. Nathan Lyon took 5-34 against Sri Lanka in his first ever Test innings, and the rest is history.
In the decade since that fateful debut, Lyon has played 100 Test matches and taken 399 wickets. He’s earned the moniker ‘GOAT’ (greatest of all time) because he is Australia’s most successful ever finger spinner.
But while he’s been a constant in the Test team, he certainly hasn’t escaped scrutiny or criticism for below-par performances.
Against India last summer he took only nine wickets at an average of 55.11. That’s a miserable return compared to his career average of 32.12.
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Series that poor are few and far between for Lyon, to be fair. The previous summer he dominated New Zealand with 20 wickets in three Tests at 17.25. The last time he played against England he took 20 wickets at 33.40 on foreign soil during the 2019 Ashes.
Cricket legend Mark Taylor certainly isn’t ending the 33-year-old’s Test career yet, but he’s revealed concern about Australia’s spin depth yet again.
If Lyon gets injured or underperforms during the looming Ashes series, Taylor says there’s no obvious option to replace him in the XI.
“The worry for selectors is the back-up for Nathan Lyon,” Taylor told Wide World of Sports.
“Lyon has bowled a lot of overs so far without a lot of success. His job will be to keep things fairly quiet but also to pick up some handy wickets, particularly in those middle overs of the Test match after lunch.
“Australia will be hoping that Lyon is good for 12 to 15 wickets in the series.
“The problem I see is we still don’t have anyone who’s putting the pressure on Nathan Lyon, that if things don’t go well or Lyon gets injured, who’s our next spinner?
“Who is the guy that we put in?”
Mitchell Swepson is the only other specialist spin bowler named in Australia’s 15-player Ashes squad this week.
The 28-year-old leggie has played 48 first-class games and holds an average of 33.66.
In the Sheffield Shield this season, Queensland’s left-arm orthodox spinner Matthew Kuhnemann has taken 15 wickets and is leading the tally alongside Victorian paceman Scott Boland.
The competition’s next best spinner is young South Australian leggie Lloyd Pope who has collected nine poles for the season.
Taylor fears none of them are putting serious heat on Lyon and threatening to knock him out of the Test side.
“It’s a development thing, it’s giving these people a go,” Taylor said of the country’s spin bowlers.
“None of them are really demanding selection by picking up regular wickets in Shield cricket.
“It makes it tough for the selectors then to say who that person is going to be.”
The Ashes kicks off at the Gabba on December 8.
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