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While Nathan Lyon
was getting ready to partner with one of the inexperienced spinners in England,
Tom Hartley, for a county season with Lancashire, he was thrilled with how the
tourists performed despite losing the initial Test 4-1.
England selected a spin trio consisting of Hartley, Shoaib Bashir, and Rehan
Ahmed in two of the five Test matches. Hartley, who had impressed with 7 for 62
on his debut in Hyderabad, played the entire series and finished with 22
wickets at 36.13. After arriving late owing to visa complications, Bashir made
four appearances and took 17 wickets at a pace of 33.35, including his
first-ever five-wicket haul in Dharamsala.
Hartley has already
quipped that Lyon will be “fed up of me” by the end of the season,
but it is unclear how much the two play together in the early going of the
County Championship.
Lyon, who claimed to be “absolutely glued” to the England-India
series, thinks Bashir might have “something special” and succeed in
Australia.
“All three of
them to be honest with you,” Lyon said on the Willow Talk podcast when
asked who stood out for him. “And I’m not just saying that to be kind.
They had a pretty hard introduction into Test cricket. That’s one hell of a way
to start your Test career, come over and bowl to Rohit [Sharma] and [Shubman]
Gill and everyone else.
“But I’m looking forward to getting over to Lancashire and meeting Tom
[Hartley] and bowling with him and just having discussions about left-arm
[orthodox], right-arm offies is a pretty similar craft. It’s going to be
interesting to see the mindset, his reflections. I’m looking forward to
hopefully playing a bit with him over there as well which will be good.
“Bashir looked like he had something special as well. I like that he went
over the back of it [the ball], so he could be a threat down here for
sure.”