to 2014, he had a real problem with the final stanza. Maybe it was the way he arrived and those who did the
job for Australia before him – we all have a bit of impostor syndrome, after all. Ever since a harrowing
experience where he couldn’t bowl South Africa out in 2012 at Adelaide, the nerves would show – not
dissimilar to Nathan Hauritz before him; not least on that fateful day at Cardiff. It was never bravado he
exuded when the job came his way.
In the first 19 opportunities that Lyon had to bowl in the fourth innings after his debut, only 24 wickets
came at an average of 36 and – more problematically – a strike rate of 78. He has never taken a bag or won a
Test for Australia on the final day. That all changed, once again in Adelaide, in December 2014 when he did
get the job done in the first Test played after Philip Hughes’ death. That afternoon he held his nerve against
Kohli and co. with seven wickets in a hurry. Since that day, his 19 fourth-innings frolics have netted him 40
scalps at 29, striking at 52. He has routinely been the main man at the end. Sure enough, he was again
today.
It’s a very different world that Lyon operates in now as Australia’s most experienced player with 87 caps to
his name, but it would only have been natural to have thought this week about when he was cruelly dropped
for the opening Test of the 2013 Ashes at Nottingham. The kid who replaced him, Ashton Agar, made 98
and had the national heart swooning.
It’s entirely possible that his career could have ended there and then, or a number of times since. But
integral to the story of the now 31-year-old is resilience. For fighting back time and again, Lyon now boasts
numbers, his haul of 6/49 – his 15th five-for - taking him to 352 wickets.
Assuming he passes Dennis Lillee’s 355 victims at Lord’s next week, that will leave only a couple of blokes
called Warne and McGrath ahead of him for all-time wickets as an Australian Test bowler.
Currently, he has the 24th most wickets in Test cricket and should crack the top 20 this series when
overtaking another band of all-time greats. Lyon nearly has 100 more in his column than Graeme Swann,
with Lance Gibbs also in his wake.
“He could get plenty,” Tim Paine said when asked how many Lyon could finish with, 500 now a very
realistic goal. “He doesn’t seem to have too many niggles or injuries over his career. The ball is coming out
as well as ever. He’s a bit the same as Smithy, I feel like every Test match or series they seem to get better
which is astonishing at their age. But if you come and watch both of them train you see why they keep
improving and keep getting better.”
That stick-to-itiveness of Lyon was also apparent within this match after going wicketless through day two.
This was his stage and these days, that doesn’t daunt him one bit. Granted, Jason Roy made it easy for him
when inexplicably running down the pitch, but the hard-spun delivery needed to be on target. It was his
removal of the Joes before lunch, Denly and Root, which were both classics of the fingerspin genre. In both
cases, he had zipped his stock delivery down faster than before, Cameron Bancroft the unflappable catcher
at short leg.
After the break, it was time to work over England’s deep bank of southpaws, starting with Ben Stokes. It
was destined to take a pearler of a delivery to get him and that’s what Lyon produced from around the
wicket, with all the drift and turn that tweakers dream of. Soon thereafter, he had Moeen Ali’s number for
the ninth time in the last ten innings, captured with an even more dangerous delivery than the one that did
Stokes. That made five. When Stuart Broad was the third left-hander to edge, this time to Steve Smith, he
was on a hat-trick.