Australia have been outplayed in all areas: Nathan Lyon

Australian off-spinner Nathan Lyon admitted that the visitors were completely outplayed in all three departments of the game. Australia lost the three-match Test series 2-0, with one match to go as their horrible run in the subcontinent continues.

“We’ve been outplayed in all areas,” Lyon said in Galle on Sunday. “I’m not going to stand here and make excuses or blame anyone. We’ve been outplayed and you’ve got to give credit where credit’s due. They’ve totally outplayed us. Yeah it’d be great to bowl with some runs on the board but that’s up to Nos. 1 down to 11 to get those runs.”

Sri Lankan spinners were able to cause more problems for the batsmen, whereas their counterpart duo of Nathan Lyon and Jon Holland fond it hard to even contain runs. Dilruwan Perera and Rangana Herath mainly tried to impart sidespin at Galle, as it doesn’t always land it on the seam, the ball might turn off the track or might skid on – and keeps the batsmen guessing.

“As spinners, we need to keep hitting the stumps,” Lyon said. “If you look at their spinners, that’s what they do really well, they ask questions off the stumps. If I’m being honest enough, I don’t think Duck [Holland] and myself probably did that to the best of our ability in the last Test match. You’ve got to give credit where credit’s due. Sri Lanka plays spin really well.”

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“They know the conditions really well over here and they played really well and put us under pressure. We’ve got to combat that, come the third Test. It’s just about Duck and I finding a way how to best go about it in these conditions. We’re both open to change I guess. It’s different bowling in different conditions over here. It’s a learning curve. If we can keep learning over here and improving, that’s a big tick for us,” he added.

The Australian spinners tended to get on top of the ball in order to extract bounce rather than the sidespin. “I daresay there’s an argument for that,” he noted. “As a spinner, you need to have all different variations. I’m comfortable going over the top of the ball and also around it. A lot of their spinners go around it and you get that natural variation with the ball going straight on. We’ve put it into play but unfortunately, it hasn’t come off for us Australian spinners. If we can keep improving, keep learning from our mistakes in the first two Test matches then we’re going the right way.

Lyon pointed out that some of the Asian batsmen have been successfully using the sweep, which Australians started to use more often in the second innings of the Test match.

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“I only sweep because I don’t trust my defence, and that’s my only scoring shot,” Lyon said modestly. “But you see the good players of spin, not only here with Sri Lanka, but you look at Younis Khan, Virat Kohli, and these guys, they sweep well and they do that to try and out you off your lengths.”

Sri Lankan’s haven’t allowed the Australian spinners to settle as they went for a lot of runs. Lyon himself conceded at 4.14 runs per over. “It’s a challenge for all our bowlers. We don’t like going at four an over, one of our goals is to bowl in partnerships and I don’t think we’ve done that well enough,” Lyon said. “Mitchell Starc was outstanding last game, Josh Hazlewood was brilliant bowling out there as well, but if we can bowl well in partnerships, try to tie down one end, we know they’re going to play some shots.”

“It’s that type of cricket, they like to hit the boundaries, so if we can try to cut that down then we bring about more patience and more opportunities around the bat,” Lyon summed up.

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