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With all the hype over Fawad Ahmed’s impending citizenship and seemingly certain addition to the Ashes squad, it appears many pundits already have his name pencilled in the XI for the first Test at Trent Bridge.
Given there is as much chance of Australia playing two spinners in England as there is of New Zealand’s Chris Martin hitting a Test hundred, selecting Ahmed would mean consigning Nathan Lyon to drinks duties.
But is Nathan Lyon really doing so poorly that he deserves to be dumped for the latest spinning flavour of the month?
Lyon is coming off nine wickets and his best ever figures in his last Test match (including the prized wicket of Sachin Tendulkar in both innings), taken in a country that has proved a graveyard for Australian spinners over the years.
In fact, his 15 wickets over three matches of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy is the best series haul by an Australian spinner in India in over 40 years, a better tally than even S.K. Warne ever managed.
Considering the career-ending mauling that Indian batsmen usually provide for Aussie spinners, 15 wickets at an average of 37.33 is something of a miracle.
In three Tests alone, he already has the fourth most wickets on Indian soil for Australian spin bowlers, behind such luminaries as Benaud, Warne and Mallet.
His career record is easily superior to any other Aussie spinner in the post-Warne era, and at just 25 years of age he is still developing the nuances and mental strength that only prolonged Test experience can provide.
But this means little to an Australian cricketing media and public that is desperate for the kind of headline-grabbing, Pommy-bamboozling performances that they grew accustomed to from Warne.
Critics have been quick to jump on Lyon’s inability to rip through opposition batting line-ups in the last innings of a match, but as just one cog in an Australian bowling unit, the blame cannot solely lie with him.
Even taking into account his fourth innings shortcomings, Lyon has a better average than contemporaries Daniel Vettori, Sunil Narine, Ajantha Mendis and Monty Panesar.
Being a no-frills spinner with a decent record and youth on his side apparently stacks up poorly against the mystery of the unknown that is Fawad Ahmed.
Ahmed’s three Sheffield Shield appearances that yielded 16 wickets are definitely promising, but hardly worthy of an instant promotion to the Test team, despite the praise of Damien Martyn, Cameron White and James Hopes, among others.
But Australia’s spinning stocks have been so low for so long that the media have been quick to jump on Ahmed, blowing up ‘promising’ to ‘potentially Ashes-winning’.
Being a practitioner of the sexy, dark art that is leg spin certainly hasn’t hurt Ahmed’s appeal to the spin-starved cricketing public.
But ‘promising’ will only get you so far (as too many recent Australian spinners have found out to their peril), and Ahmed needs to continue taking wickets to oust Lyon as our premier tweaker.
The upcoming Australia A matches in England are Ahmed’s perfect opportunity to press his case, but let’s not write off Lyon yet.
He is the incumbent spinner, is in decent form, and his performances deserve a prolonged shot at the English batsmen before he is the next discard on the pile of forgotten spinners, so why don’t we give him that chance?
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