Nathan Lyon will have to adopt some of his Indian counterpart’s methods if he is to set his record in Asia right; and he has been working on doing just that
Sidharth Monga in Pune21-Feb-20172:11
‘I have been studying Ashwin a lot’ – Lyon
You split the index finger and the middle finger along the seam, make sure you don’t let the ball touch the palm, and give it as much rip as you can. That’s fingerspin stripped to its essentials, but the variations within that purview make it fascinating, especially in an era when three of the top four Test bowlers are fingerspinners despite the doosra going out of favour. The traditional – correct, even – Australian way of bowling with the seam pointing to leg slip and the street-smart Asian way of mixing it up with various seam angles to facilitate natural variation provide a great contrast on the eve of a series that will pit Nathan Lyon, Australia’s most successful offspinner, against R Ashwin, the fastest man to 250 Test wickets.It is remarkable that the fingerspinners have found this resurgence after the doosra has practically been outlawed. The DRS-empowered (or awakened) umpires have made the straighter delivery lethal. No longer can a batsman afford to plonk the front foot forward and miss the ball. So they are trying to stay inside the line, which exposes the outside edge and the stumps. That makes for a role reversal.When India went to Australia in 2014-15, Ashwin tried to learn from Lyon, who won Australia the Adelaide Test with a 12-wicket haul. Now Lyon is watching Ashwin. Most important for him is to be able to threaten both edges as India’s fingerspinners do. You can’t bowl the straighter one on demand. It’s not like the legspinners’ wrong ‘un, which you actually aim to bowl. That’s what makes it lethal too: you can pick the wrong ‘un out of the hand, but there is no way you can tell from the hand that the next intended offbreak is not going to turn.Josh Hazlewood on…
The SG ball
“Haven’t bowled with the SG ball, this is my first time. Little bit different. Been training with it. The brand new ball swings a bit, and once it’s old, it reverses. Good signs there. We have three front-line quicks, that’s plenty of fast bowling for this tour.”
What has changed after nine straight defeats in Asia
“This is a really different group even from Sri Lanka. We have had a good preparation, two weeks in Dubai. Definitely we are well prepared this time. I think we have done everything we can leading in to the first Test. It is about putting those plans into action this week.”
Change in lines required in India
“In India you bowl a lot straighter. In Australia you bowl in that channel on and outside the off stump. In India you bowl a lot tighter on the middle and off. I think it’s about drying up the runs. It’s fast outfields here and runs can tick along pretty quickly. In that sense you build pressure and wickets come by bowling the dots and good maiden overs for a long period of time.”
You can’t bowl the straighter one, but you can facilitate it. It is perfectly reasonable if Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja and Rangana Herath – the leading spinners in the rankings – don’t share all their trade secrets, but conventionally they are understood to do it through different seam positions, through different release points, and through under-cutting the ball. The idea is to land the ball differently; if it lands on the seam, it turns and if it lands on the leather, it skids straight on. Under-cutting the ball is remarkable in particular because it extremely difficult to do it across 22 yards and not flex the elbow. Sometimes you just drift it away enough to land it wider than the batsman originally expects it to land.Lyon has played 11 Tests in Asia, and averages 42.57 in conditions that should help him. In less helpful conditions, he averages a respectable 32.15. This will be his fifth series in Asia, and over the years he has tried to adjust, especially in his trajectory and pace – bowling quicker to not give batsmen time to recover – but success has been elusive. Lyon can’t unlearn everything and start bowling fingerspin all over again, but he is now looking to Ashwin to help him out.Ever since his last Test, in the first week of January, Lyon has spent considerable time watching tapes of Ashwin. “I have been watching a lot of footage of Ashwin, the way he goes about it, his different release points,” Lyon said in Pune, the venue of the first Test. “He is a world-class spinner, the best at the moment in the world, there is a reason for it. Been studying him a lot, hopefully I can put it in play.”I am not going to tell you what that is, because the whole world will read it. There are a few things as spinners in the Australian team we have certainly spoken about. Hopefully we can put them in practice and hit a few pads. There are a few changes, but I am not going to change my whole action for this tour. I am aware you need to change a few things here and there. But it’s a game of cricket, if we go out there and control the process… We are playing on the same wickets as they are, so there are no excuses.”Lyon said he has “definitely changed” his approach to bowling in Asia since his last visit to India, but didn’t want to elaborate it so close to a Test series. He will need all the improvement he can manage because he doesn’t find himself in an enviable position. Outside Asia, he is mainly used as a steady bowler. Sometimes he can be just an afterthought. When he does come on, he is expected to be steady, bowl the Australian way and build pressure for the quicker bowlers.
“If you are going to come out and try to take a wicket off every ball, you are going to get hit for boundaries. For us, coming over and competing here is about building pressure.”Nathan Lyon
All of a sudden, Lyon finds himself in conditions where the opposition spinners feel like demons to his side’s batsmen, and he has to go out and try to replicate it. Not many have been able to do so; only Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann come to mind after Saqlain Mushtaq did that to India in 1999. Lyon said he needed to stay away from that mindset.”That’s where you get into trouble,” Lyon said. “If you are going to come out and try to take a wicket off every ball, you are going to get hit for boundaries. For us, coming over and competing here is about building pressure, either with quickies or spinners at the other end. Try to give minimum runs and make the Indians play the big shots. That’s where we are going to build pressure. That’s how you build pressure and take wickets. If you go out thinking that I have got 10 overs and I am going to get them in 10 overs, you are on a slippery slope to nowhere really.”With the amount of cricket played today, Lyon has another opportunity to set his record in Asia right. He is already the most capped Australia fingerspinner in Asia. When he turns out in Bangalore later in the series, only Shane Warne will have played more Tests in Asia as a spinner. Whether he likes it or not, Lyon will be in the spotlight. The Australian way of bowling fingerspin will have to merge with the Asian way if Australia have to compete in the series.