“He’s got country boy hands, strong fingers, the ball looks completely at home in them,” says John Davison, aka the Spin Whisperer, the satisfaction in his Queensland burr plain to hear.
“It’s testament to his action and the work he’s put in over the years, he doesn’t put too much strain on his back or his knee, he could go on for ever,” he says with a chuckle. It’s a statement that will terrify batters the world over and have the great bowlers of the game twitchily looking over their shoulders. Nathan Lyon has just chalked up his 500th (and 501st) Test wicket and doesn’t look like stopping any time soon.
Related: Humility and heart: how Nathan Lyon became the quietly turning key to Australia’s success
Lyon’s backstory and standing within the game will be pored over in the next few days and weeks. The landmark wicket of Pakistan’s Faheem Ashraf in Perth, pinned lbw in classic Lyon fashion, will inevitably lead to talk of his origins and his future.
It’s some story. Lyon is a shy country kid from the town of Young in the South Western Slopes – “The Cherry Capital of Australia”. From playing against his brother, Brendan, in the back yard, his journey has led him to take on adults twice his size in club matches, moving as a teenager to play representative cricket in Canberra, and then on to Adelaide and an oft-mentioned stint carrying out curation (groundsperson) duties at the Adelaide Oval while turning out in Grade cricket for nearby Prospect.
From there a smattering of eye-catching performances in the germination phase of the Big Bash and a handful of Sheffield Shield games led him to be thrust in to the Australian Test side in 2011 when he took a wicket with his first ball. Nicking off Kumar Sangakkara no less. Twelve years and 500 Test wickets later, only Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath stand above him in the all-time wicket list for his country.
“It is scary because he’s actually getting better,” says Davison. “And he’s playing a lot of his Test cricket in a place [Australia] that is absolutely brutal for the finger spinner.”
Davison first came across Lyon while working on a spin programme for Cricket Australia, travelling around the states to identify new talent. In Canberra he came across a skinny 18-year-old who “bowled around himself and wasn’t that impressive”. They have worked together on and off ever since. Davison was appointed as spin coach with the Australian men’s team in 2013-14 and had a specific remit to mentor Lyon.
Lyon has called Davison “the best spin coach in the world”, adding: “Davo is the one person I really trust … I’ve got a fantastic relationship with him. He knows my technique inside out and he’s the one that can come up and give me honest feedback when I need it.”
Nowadays, it’s a less formal but still fruitful relationship. A little over three weeks ago, on 499 Test wickets, Lyon asked for a session in the run up to the Perth Test against Pakistan. “He just flicks me a text and usually he comes to Brisbane but this time I went down to Sydney,” says Davison. “He hadn’t been bowling as regularly because of the calf injury in the Ashes so we just worked on a few things to get the feeling back – wrist position, getting on top of the ball, things like that.
“It doesn’t happen as often as it used to because he’s on top of his game but we still have these check-ins. I don’t know if he does it for me or for him … but it’s always good, and heartwarming after all this time.”
Davison has been there for the low moments – the self-doubt and pressure Lyon felt as he found himself trying to hold down the role of Australia’s No 1 Test spinner, notably in the post-Warne years when the knives were out due to a perceived lack of second-innings effectiveness.
That Lyon came through those tough periods, rode out the scrutiny and started to deliver consistently on the highest stage came as no surprise to Davison. “He’s so hungry, he wants to improve all the time. He was just saying to me the other day about going to play county cricket in Lancashire next year and how he wants to play in all the competitions and improve his white ball skills. I’ve no doubt that he’ll keep getting better.”
As a player, Davison is perhaps best remembered for blasting a 67-ball century for Canada against West Indies at Centurion in 2003, the fastest World Cup century at the time. He was also a cunning off-spinner who would often open the bowling in one-day internationals, memorably taking 17 wickets in Canada’s first first-class match in more than 50 years (in 2004) to chalk up (at the time) the best first-class bowling figures (at the time) since Jim Laker’s 19-wicket haul against Australia at Old Trafford in 1956.
Davison, now 53, is in demand as a private spin coach; he has recently been working with the Aussie leg-spinner Mitchell Swepson and is passionate about unearthing new talent in Queensland and beyond. He sports an impressively grey-flecked beard in the mould of WG Grace or Charles Darwin but it is revolutions rather than evolution that get his whiskers twitching
“I’ve done over 15 years of travelling the country testing spin bowlers,” he says, “and there’s a piece of technology created by the Trackman company that is designed specifically to measure spin imparted on a cricket ball. If a finger spinner can get over 2,000 RPM (revolutions per minute) on to the ball then I start to get excited. If it is over 2,200 RPM then that’s almost another ballgame entirely.”
The inevitable question follows – how does Lyon fare? “He’s top of the tree. He operates between 2,200 and 2,400 RPM. No one that I’ve come across has really come close to that as a finger spinner.”
Lyon is 62 Test scalps behind McGrath on the all-time list; beyond that the next spinner above him is Anil Kumble – 118 wickets in the distance. A brief glance at his career statistics coupled with his fitness record and oft-stated desire to improve suggests that he could go past both with another few years of graft. Davison agrees: “Nathan’s really reaping the rewards now. He’s got a great pace attack around him and has all the experience. He’s a well-oiled machine with so much cricket left in him, if he stays on the park then the next few years could be his most successful yet.”
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
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