Lyon in wait: Spinner left one short of 500 Test wickets as Australia dominate
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Marnus Labuschagne suffered a finger injury and Nathan Lyon was forced to play the waiting game for 500 wickets on day three of the first Test against Pakistan in Perth.
The veteran spinner was left stranded on 499 on Saturday when Pakistan were bowled out at tea for 271. Australia went to stumps at 2-84, a lead of 300, with Usman Khawaja unbeaten on 34 and Steve Smith 43. Captain Pat Cummins decided not to enforce the follow-on despite his team being 216 ahead on the first innings.
Australia lost first-innings century maker David Warner for a duck in the second over before a run had been scored, and then Labuschagne was struck a painful blow on the right hand by a lifting delivery from Khurram Shahzad.
He was treated on the field by team medical staff and appeared to have a cut. Labuschagne carried on but was out two overs later, top-edging a short ball to wicketkeeper Sarfaraz Ahmed for two, leaving Australia 2-5.
“It didn’t look pretty,” Labuschagne’s batting partner Khawaja said on Fox Cricket. “Marnus is a pretty tough character. When he takes his glove off, I get a little bit worried. But I think he was all right.”
With the pitch beginning to crack and increasingly playing at different heights, Smith also required onfield treatment after being hit on the arm by a Shaheen Shah Afridi delivery, but continued after a delay.
Nathan Lyon celebrates with teammates the wicket of Imam-ul-Haq during day three in Perth.Credit: Getty
Lyon will have to wait for Pakistan’s second innings to claim his 500th wicket after the part-time off-spin of Travis Head finished off the tourists. No.11 Shaheen skied a slog to be caught by Khawaja at mid-on.
Having already taken a wicket on the second afternoon, Lyon needed another three to become just the eighth player in Test history, and third Australian behind Shane Warne (708) and Glenn McGrath (563), to reach 500.
But for the second day in a row, home-town hero Mitchell Marsh stole the early limelight. In his first over on day three, Marsh removed Pakistan’s world-class batsman and former captain, Babar Azam, caught behind by a diving Alex Carey for 21.
Carey had a confusing Friday, failing to remove the bails as Pakistan opener Abdullah Shafique absent-mindedly lifted his foot for what replays suggested would have been a runout, but his Saturday was much better.
Marnus Labuschagne is treated for a hand injury.Credit: Getty
Following his removal of Babar, Carey stumped stone-walling opener Imam-ul-Haq off Lyon for 62, scored in 199 balls, and later did the same to get rid of Aamer Jamal (10). The debutant stretched forward and dragged his back foot beyond the batting crease by a millimetre or two.
Spinners are often the drummer of Test attacks in Australia, soaking up overs while the fast bowlers dominate. However, Lyon’s immense under-the-radar contribution is best highlighted in two ways this year.
The first was his absence from the second half of the Ashes tour after suffering a serious calf injury during the second Test at Lord’s. Australia’s 2-0 lead evaporated without him, and they scrambled out of the series with a 2-2 draw to retain the urn.
The second is how many wickets Lyon has taken in the Tests he has played this year. His removal of Jamal took him to 41 wickets at an average of 25 in his ninth Test, to make him the leading bowler in the world for 2023.
Mitchell Starc bowled wicketkeeper Sarfaraz Ahmed for three with a classic inswinger that went through a very wide gate, raising more questions about why Mohammad Rizwan was usurped as Pakistan’s gloveman.
The second new ball didn’t go well for Starc, who sprayed it around struggling for control, prompting Cummins to take the big left-armer off after a two-over spell.
Starc’s struggles explain why he and fellow opening bowler Josh Hazlewood stayed on the ground after stumps on the second day speaking to the umpires and the ground staff for some time.
The problem for Starc appears to be his take-off, where the edge of the drop-in pitch joins the playing field at the members’ end. Staff had a garden fork lifting soil along the join and then used a hammer to flatten the footmarks on the front crease. At Hazlewood’s end, they flattened the footmarks.
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