Off-spinner Lyon notches Test wicket No.450
Nathan Lyon successfully appeals for the wicket of the West Indies Alzarri Joseph in the first innings in Adelaide. Photo: AAP
Australian off-spinner Nathan Lyon has reached another Test landmark, becoming just the eighth bowler to take 450 wickets.
Lyon reached the feat on Sunday by bowling West Indian Alzarri Joseph on the fourth day of the second Test in Adelaide.
Two days after eclipsing Shane Warne’s towering figure of a record 66 Test wickets at Adelaide Oval, Lyon reach a height scaled by just seven men in Test cricket – and only by Warne and Glenn McGrath for Australia.
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“Many people have talked about it but I think he has the best stock ball I’ve seen in spin bowling,” Australia’s spin coach and New Zealand great Daniel Vettori said of Lyon after day three in Adelaide.
“That ability to repeat it, to ask so many questions, to have the pace on the ball, the top spin that allows the drift and the spin and now he’s trying to add to that repertoire.
“It just comes down to the fact that the ball he bowls, his stock ball, is so consistent, so repetitive, and asks so many questions.”
Vettori has worked with Lyon for parts of this year, at a time when the spinner has returned to his best.
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The spinner has claimed crucial five-wicket hauls in both Pakistan and at Perth to spin Australia to day-five wins, while also claiming another five-wicket haul in Galle in Sri Lanka.
“For myself as a spin bowler, I would have loved to have had that (stock) ball,” Vettori said.
“You hear other spinners around the world talk about it and say that’s the ball they admire the most.
“They try and replicate it, try and repeat it but he’s been the only one that’s been able to do it for such a long period of time.”
-AAP