Nathan Lyon knew immediately. As soon as he dived at full stretch to his right at fine-leg to prevent Jamie Smith’s pull from reaching the boundary in the 77th over of England’s second innings at the Adelaide Oval on Sunday, a slight grimace betrayed the sense that he wasn’t quite right. He threw the ball back to wicketkeeper Alex Carey whilst still on his knees and instantly clutched his right hamstring.
When he did get back up on his feet, he couldn’t do much more than limp a couple of steps before signalling towards the dressing room for help and hobbling outside the field of play. As Marnus Labuschagne, who went up to the 38-year-old to check on him, disclosed to the host broadcaster later, Lyon knew then and there that he would play no further part in the game. “I think I have done my hammy,” Lyon told Labuschagne grimly.
By the time Australia took the final wicket of Josh Tongue later in the afternoon to retain the Ashes in just 11 days, Lyon was on crutches. Having made a quick visit to the hospital for a scan, he returned to the venue in time to witness the winning moment and willed himself back onto the park to congratulate his euphoric teammates. As chuffed as he would have been about Australia getting over the line, it was cruel for the Test to end the way it did for Lyon personally.
Having very much helped set up the win with his exploits on the penultimate evening – this is his fourth consecutive Ashes series victory at home – he would have dearly loved to be on the outfield to soak in the moments leading up to victory. Moreover, this was the Test that saw him surpass Glenn McGrath’s tally of 563 wickets to go up to No. 2 in the list of Australia’s highest wicket-takers. To have accomplished the feat at the Adelaide Oval, a venue that he tended to as a groundsman before his Test debut, ought to have been a highlight not marred by his injury.
Decisive spell
In the final session of the fourth day, Lyon had been the wrecker-in-chief, removing Harry Brook, Ben Stokes and Zak Crawley in the space of six overs to essentially ensure that the hosts had one hand on the urn. Until Lyon’s dismissal of Brook, England had done reasonably well to get to 176 for three in 47 overs in pursuit of a record target of 435. Brook and Crawley had negotiated Lyon effectively, sweeping and reverse-sweeping routinely to throw the off-spinner off his lines and lengths. His figures in the fourth innings were unflattering before his opening breakthrough: 10-1-49-0.
But there is a reason why Lyon has been snaring Test wickets for a living for 14 years. Off the second ball of a new spell to Brook, he altered his line a tad wider of off-stump and had the 26-year-old reaching out for one reverse sweep too many. Adding to his catalogue of ungainly dismissals in this series, England’s impetuous No. 5 lost his balance and looked back in disbelief once the ball hit his leg stump.
Just four overs later, it was the turn of Stokes to look on in disbelief. As is often his reaction when the stumps are dislodged, the England skipper couldn’t quite believe his eyes when Lyon produced a ball that spun past his defence and clattered off-pole. It was a ripper alright, but truth be told, Stokes was neither forward nor back, a fallibility in his footwork versus spin that has now brought about 10 dismissals against the Australian in 23 encounters.
If at all he was disputing Lyon’s propensity to produce such deliveries, all he had to do was to hark back to the first innings of this Test when the wily tweaker dismissed his namesake, Ben Duckett, in similar fashion. The ball to the England opener will likely be etched in Lyon’s memory for a long time, for it was the breakthrough that took him past McGrath. With Crawley’s stumping late on day four being the last of his five wickets across the two innings, Lyon has moved along to 567 wickets in 141 Tests.
Second to Warne
Remarkably now, only the late Shane Warne, whose 708 scalps came in 145 Tests at an average of 25.41, stands above Lyon in the pantheon of Australia’s most prolific wicket-takers. It is worth remembering that in the period between Warne’s exit in 2007 and Lyon’s entry in 2011, Australia went through spinners with the frequency of a chameleon changing colour, yearning desperately to find a worthy successor to the irreverent genius from Victoria.
While Lyon isn’t Warne – no one can fill those proverbial big shoes – he has optimised his attributes to carve a career that will be just as hard to emulate for the men to follow. Looking back, Lyon’s first two years were riddled with bumps, and when he was dropped for the opening Ashes Test of the 2013 series in England, he seemed set to go down the path of his immediate predecessors. But Australia was shrewd enough to realise its folly and bring Lyon back for the third Test of that series against Alastair Cook and Co. The turning point for the spinner came in the reverse Ashes just a few months later, where he proved to be an able foil to the Mitchell Johnson-led pace battery and claimed 19 wickets in a 5-0 whitewash at home.
Starting from the middle of the English summer in 2013, Lyon has evolved into a near-permanent presence in Australia’s playing XI, with the Lord’s Test in 2023 marking his 100th successive appearance in whites. Not dissimilar to the mishap in Adelaide, it was only a calf injury while fielding during England’s first innings at Lord’s that curtailed his incredible streak and prompted a premature end to his series two years ago.
Lyon’s success over a long Test career is proof that there is still a place for an off-spinner in the classical mould in the modern game. While he is one of three off-spinners with more than 500 wickets in Test history, he doesn’t possess Muttiah Muralitharan’s big-spinning off-break or deadly doosra. Neither does he have the repertoire to experiment as R. Ashwin did. But what he does have is a stock ball, armed with overspin and drift, that he backs himself to deliver at a desired spot at any given juncture. It has held him in good stead in a land usually unforgiving to his tribe: his record of 273 wickets in 74 Tests at 31.08 in Australia is in marked contrast to a host of visiting off-spinners of repute who have travelled to those shores.
Unusually, though, he has been dropped from a couple of Tests in recent months. Having claimed a match haul of six for 117 in the second Test against West Indies at Grenada in July, Lyon was benched for the third Test in Jamaica as the Aussies opted for an all-pace attack with the pink ball. Australia’s selector on tour, Tony Dodemaide, described Lyon’s omission as a “one-off”.
But when the team had to be picked for the second Ashes Test in Brisbane two weeks ago – another day-night affair — Lyon was again left out. To say Lyon wasn’t pleased with the call would be an understatement. “Absolutely filthy,” he told broadcaster Channel 7 of his reaction to the omission.
Long road to recovery
It will be all the more infuriating, then, that just as he had begun getting back into his groove in Adelaide, the injury has thrown another curve ball. On Tuesday, Lyon underwent surgery as Cricket Australia confirmed that he will be sidelined for an “extended period”. In Lyon’s place, the bespectacled Todd Murphy, who has played seven Tests so far, has been drafted into the squad for the next two games in Melbourne and Sydney.
Coach Andrew McDonald weighed in on Lyon’s road to recovery. “The surgeon will give us a report and a rough length of time. It is going to take a lot of hard work with that type of injury. It is going to be a hard period for him to get back to where he was,” he told the Australian media on Tuesday. At the same time, McDonald knows that Lyon’s will to keep going hasn’t dimmed in the slightest. A five-Test tour of India, where Lyon has never won a series, in early 2027 is a target that the offie had long identified. “Lyon still wants to do it. That’s the main thing. India is on the horizon. He will be a key part of that,” McDonald added. “In Adelaide, it was probably the best I had seen him bowl for a little while in terms of the shape and energy he had on the ball. He will get through this rehab and then look forward to what it looks like.”
Published – December 23, 2025 11:09 pm IST
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