Small tweaks in nuts and bolts make a big difference for Lyon

When Steven Smith introduced Nathan Lyon into the attack on Day 3 of the Australia versus Sri Lanka Test at the Pallekele Stadium in 2016, the visitors would have hoped for their premier spinner to run through the heart of the batting unit. But it didn’t exactly turn out that way. Standing in his way was a promising batter, Kusal Mendis. The middle-order bat employed his nimble wrists and defence to not just negate the threat of the spin spearhead but also take the game away from Australia’s grasp. Eventually, his knock of 176 turned out to be a game-breaking innings as Sri Lanka scripted a memorable come-from-behind win. Meanwhile, Lyon finished with disappointing figures of 2 for 108.

Seven years later, in the bubbling cauldron of the Indore heat, Lyon’s stellar performance with the ball piloted Australia to a rare Test win in India. So has Lyon overhauled his bowling in order to succeed in Asian conditions? Or the nuts and bolts of his bowling remain the same but just the loose edges have been sharpened? To find the answer let’s travel back in time to the Pallekele Test.

With the score reading 59/0 in the second innings of the Pallekele Test, Lyon tossed the ball up and aimed to sneak through Mendis’ defence from outside off. Just that the skilful batter cracked the slog-sweep and the ball scurried away to the midwicket fence. The next time Lyon gave some flight, he imparted more than enough revs and there was an electric whizz sound attached to the ball. He dragged his length back a touch too, only for Mendis to once again crack the slog-sweep and for it to clear the boundary rope.

Another observation during the course of Mendis’ innings was the field set for Lyon. There was only one fielder inside the circle for Lyon on the on-side – midwicket. Australia were hoping that Mendis would take his chances through the on-side and mistime one of his shots. Unfortunately for the visitors, Mendis kept finding the sweet spot of the willow. Basically, Lyon was following the traditional Australian method of bowling off-spin: spin the ball hard from outside the right-hander’s off-stump.

But the same bowler had a slightly different theme to his bowling when he snaffled eight wickets in the second innings of the Indore Test. On a raging turner, on expected lines, Lyon was introduced into the attack in just the fifth over. Straightaway, Shubman Gill looked to take the aggressive route by dancing down the deck but he couldn’t connect. Lyon perhaps used all his experience and had some kind of foreknowledge that Gill could chip down the track again. When the opener advanced down the track off the sixth ball of the over, from round the wicket and wide of the crease, Lyon beat him in the air and castled the batter.

The first key difference between how Lyon operated at Pallekele and Gill’s wicket was the off-spinner using the round the wicket angle while bowling to the right-handers. In fact, right through the course of the India-Australia series, he has been employing the round the wicket angle. It brings a different dimension to Lyon’s game in Asia. The spinner can now zoom it more on the stumps and bring the LBW mode of dismissal into play. In the DRS era, LBW is one of the main modes of dismissal, especially in the backdrop of Indian pitches offering low bounce.

“I know a lot of people see it as a negative. I see it as total opposite. I think it’s very attacking, you are bringing all modes of dismissal. Times have changed when you were able to bowl over the stumps and still get guys in line,” the spinner said in the presser.

“Yes, that may be the case every now and then but when you bowl that line, the good batters around the world they get outside the line straightaway. But when you come around the wicket with big spin, it brings in all modes of dismissal,” he added.

It is true that it isn’t the first time Lyon has utilized the round the wicket angle to the right-handers effectively. As far back as the 2013-14 Ashes, with John Davision as his mentor, Lyon had operated from round the wicket on enough occasions. However, in Asia, he has preferred to bowl more from over the wicket. To encapsulate the point further, one can glance through his spells at Bengaluru in 2017 and Lahore in 2022. But in the ongoing Test series in India, he seems to have developed enough confidence to consistently use a different angle in Asian conditions.

Lyon continued his endless probing of Indian batters as he harvested more wickets: Rohit Sharma was pinned on the back foot by a delivery with flatter trajectory. The left-handed Ravi Jadeja was done in by the arm-ball that skidded on. KS Bharat too had no answer to the slider while Cheteshwar Pujara was brilliantly caught by Smith at leg-slip. For a few of his wickets, his speeds were as high as 95 km/h.

There is one final piece of jigsaw that needs to be looked at to understand Lyon’s approach in the current series: the field setting. He generally had a square-leg, short midwicket and even a fielder at short fine in place. Obviously, there was another ring of fielders positioned in the deep on the leg-side. The field placements were tailor-made for the angle he used against right-handed batters.

So did Lyon make major changes to his bowling to adjust to the different climes in Asia? Perhaps not. The veteran spinner still depends on imparting overspin. But, at the same time, he seems to have tweaked his game just enough, which in turn has helped him to pick up a rich haul of wickets. It shouldn’t be a surprise this has been Lyon’s best Test series so far in India: 19 wickets at 17.94.