Australian Cricket - Crisis, What Crisis ??

[laj]

I listened to radio most of yesterday, the ABC commentators bagged Lyon relentlessly. I have no idea what Lyon has done to those guys but they obviously do not like him, they want O'Keefe end of story. It got to the point I had to watch some highlights to make sense of what was being said, only to find out half of the broadcast was bulls1t commentary!

Reality is this. The likes of Warne, Peterson and Chappell have been on about this for some time, not that I'm a great fan of Chappell at the moment as he says some weird stuff, but he's right about this. Lyon's performance is being hampered by some ordinary field setting and decision making. He's Australia's premier spinner and when he used correctly to the right field settings he can control a game. You don't support a test spinner by setting One Day cricket fields and using One Day cricket tactics. Too often Lyon is coming into bowl after batsmen are set, it's not a 20/20 power-play it's test cricket, Lyon should be used when batsmen are fresh to the crease not when they are are 20 runs after 15 overs. This is very odd, because the team is selected such that ideal bowling combination for new batsmen is Starc and Lyon. Hopefully the Captain will improve, then we will improve as a team.

You can expect that even if we rap this innings up quickly, we will then struggle to make the target, that it will be Lyon's fault and not the batsmen, captain or selectors. this is despite Lyon being the only really effective spinner in the game so far!

Once he got his confidence back and started bowling more slowly he bowled really well, especially in the 2nd innings. Spell late last night might've been a career saver. Actually the pressure all 4 bowlers applied as a group was outstanding and put alot of pressure on SA.