Our Last Chance Is To Put The Heat On Lyon

Trevor Bayliss said he cannot see a reason to change England’s team for the third Test in Perth, in which case he cannot have been watching the same Ashes series as me.

- Derek Pringle

I am all for minimum panic, but England are two-down after two, and while there have been moments where they have competed hard with Steve Smith’s Australia, they have not been sustained for long enough to even come close to winning a match.

One more slip in Perth and the Ashes are toast for a few years, a drastic situation that requires, for me, at least one major shift in tactics – and that is to attack Nathan Lyon.

Lyon is a fine bowler now who leads the world in 2017 with 57 Test wickets. So far, he has posed a threat with almost every ball that he has bowled, especially against England’s left-handers, who look like lame ducks when facing him. That peril, in tandem with the rest and recovery he affords Australia’s three quick bowlers when he ties up an end, has made life very difficult for England.

A similar conundrum occurred during the 1982/83 Ashes tour. Bruce Yardley, another off-spinner, was doing a similar job to Lyon for Australia. On that occasion, the fast bowling force he was invigorating comprised Jeff Thomson, Geoff Lawson and Rodney Hogg, which meant England’s batsmen were always guaranteed a torrid time at least from one end.

After going two down after three Tests, we decided on all-out attack against Yardley at the MCG and promptly won the match, albeit by the narrow margin of three runs. Up until that fourth Test, Yardley’s run-rate per over had been below 2.5. But at The ‘G,’ we pushed it up almost to 4.0, which in turn put pressure on the fast bowlers to bowl more overs as Greg Chappell, Australia’s captain, could not keep him on as long without risking the game getting away from him.