Nathan Lyon was ‘filthy’ in Brisbane. This is why his luck’s about to turn

2 months ago 6

Adelaide: Nathan Lyon and spin bowling have been given a rallying cry by Adelaide Oval’s curator Damian Hough, who declared it is up to cricket’s turf custodians around the country to ensure that slow bowlers aren’t pushed out of the game by green pitches.

“I don’t want to be the curator at Adelaide where you don’t pick a spinner. Spin needs to play a part here, it always has,” Hough said.

Nathan Lyon is expected to return to the Australian team in Adelaide.

“Even last year when he didn’t bowl a lot of overs, I felt that the pitch would have spun, but they were able to take wickets with the quicks. But spin needs to play a part in pitches around Australia, and we want it to play a part.”

Australia made a shock selection call for the second Test in Brisbane, leaving Lyon out of the team to play without a specialist spinner, instead opting for Michael Neser as a fourth seam bowler. Lyon admitted on the day he was “filthy” at that decision. But selection chair George Bailey virtually guaranteed on the spot that the veteran tweaker would play in Adelaide.

Speaking on Monday morning, Hough admitted that hot weather in Adelaide this week, with temperatures forecast to reach as high as 38C on day two (Thursday), will mean he leaves a little more moisture in the pitch than usual.

That may lead to a difficult choice for Ben Stokes or Pat Cummins at the toss, given the weather will be marginally cooler on days one and three.

“Not juice it up, we’re not wanting a green seamer out there, but we’re needing to be mindful of our moisture levels,” Hough said.

“We’ve got our ideal moisture levels going into day one, it might be an extra one or two per cent.

“The players shouldn’t notice it really, but it’s just adding a little bit there because we don’t know what the weather will do with the pitch. It could be fine, it might really dry it out and it might turn big, or it might end up flattening out also.”

Either way the captains choose, the pitch will certainly not be as much of a batting paradise as the surface prepared for the last red-ball Ashes Test played here in 2013-14, when, as Hough observed, it was largely through the hot pace of Mitchell Johnson that the game did not peter into a boring draw.

“That was super flat, that was really flat,” Hough said.

“That was our first ever Test on a drop-in, really flat, and if you didn’t have Mitchell Johnson, that might’ve been a draw, so he saved our [week]. He bowled unbelievably well.

“Back then we were trying to get the old type of pitch where it would break up and stay low on days four and five. The drop-ins don’t deteriorate like the old square used to. So since 2015 we’ve left more grass, and we’ve felt there’s been a much better contest for us.”

With CA needing a bumper Ashes summer to help bring the governing body’s budget back into surplus for the first time since 2019, Hough denied he had been pressured to produce a pitch that would take the game into day five.

“There’s always pressure, doesn’t matter what year it is,” he said. “It’s part of your role, you’ve got to step up and deliver. We don’t think ‘it needs to go for five days’, we think about a good contest between bat and ball.

“If we can get 10 wickets and 300 runs a day and it goes late into day four ... [there’s] definitely no pressure from CA or SACA around it needs to last five days.”