How Nathan Lyon rose from a shy curator to Test spinner in the space of just nine months

From a country boy growing up in Young, New South Wales, Nathan Lyon couldn’t have predicted how things would turn out when he moved to South Australia from Canberra to pursue a career as a groundsman at the Adelaide Oval.

While much of Lyon’s move from the nation’s capital was made to further his cricket – playing in Adelaide’s grade competition for Prospect – his rise was a sharp one once he was uncovered by then-state coach Darren Berry.

Instead of earning a state contract through dominance at the lower level at Prospect, Lyon’s big break came when the state side was training at a venue he was helping curate in Adelaide.

Berry says he was told by former Australia batsman Callum Ferguson – who played against Lyon in grade cricket – that the coach should have a look at the kid, ‘On the roller’, when Lyon was helping manage where the state XI was training.

That prompted the coach to invite Lyon over for a bowl during a chance centre wicket practice.

“I was lucky enough to be in the position to be coaching South Australia (in T20 cricket),” Berry explained on SEN Afternoons.

“We were training at Park 25 that’s been redeveloped in Adelaide to Karen Rolton Oval, and Nathan Lyon was a groundsman as many people know at the Adelaide Oval.

“He’d come down from Canberra, he was a country boy from Young in New South Wales and I think it was Callum Ferguson … he said to me, ‘That kid on the roller is a pretty good off-spinner, Chuck, you should have a look at him’.

“So I called him over and he was a very shy kid, Nathan, and that probably hasn’t changed all that much. He said, ‘Oh no, I’ve got to roll the wicket’. I said, ‘Come and have a bowl with us mate’, we were doing a centre wicket practice.”

Once Lyon was convinced to have a bowl, Berry immediately knew the youngster was special.

The fizz and turn the off-spinner could create with his action was different to any off-spinner Berry had seen.

“Long story short, I convinced him to have a bowl, and without being silly about it, he bowled about three or four balls, and the fizz on the ball that came out of his fingers … it was like, I hadn’t seen an off-spinner do that,” Berry recalled.

“I’ve been lucky enough to keep to Shane (Warner) who fizzed it like no other. But for an off-spinner to do it, it’s very different.

“A wrist spinner can flick it and get real zip on the ball. An off-spinner generally rolls the ball out. They’re boring, they bowl ‘door knobs’ and everyone bowls them in the park.

“But this was special. It went up and over, it fizzed and it hung in the air and it dropped. Straight away I thought, ‘This is special’.”

That uniqueness prompted Berry to call then SA director of cricket Jamie Cox where he pleaded with the boss to let him pick this unknown player from obscurity.

After Cox was convinced to come and watch Lyon bowl, the off-spinner was handed a state debut and things began to pick up steam from there.

“I rang the director of cricket, Jamie Cox at the time and I said, ‘Mate, there’s a kid down here, I want to pick him’,” Berry said.

“Jamie said, ‘Darren, he’s not even in the state squad mate, he’s playing at Prospect, we can’t pick him’.

“I said, ‘You need to come down here’. Jamie came down and to his credit, he supported me as the new coach, we went out on a bit of a limb and we plucked him and we put him into the T20 team.

“It was the year before the Big Bash started. He played his first game against New South Wales … that’s how it started, it was strange.”

That T20 debut came in January of 2011, a month later he’d make his First Class and List A debuts and his Test call-up officially came in September of that same year.

Since then, Lyon has become a legend of Aussie cricket with 501 wickets to his name from 123 Tests and Berry was thrilled to see the now 36-year-old become the third Australian to break the 500-Test wicket marker.

“I was sitting there last night thinking, ‘Wow, that kid that was rolling the wickets (is now here)’,” Berry said.

“The story is not just because it was Nathan Lyon and I was the coach.

“It was an opportunity, all I provided was an opportunity for this kid and he’s taken it and run with it.

“I remember sitting with him before he went to Sri Lanka for his first Test. He was so nervous, he didn’t think he was up to it.

“But he goes over there and he gets Kumar Sangakarra with his first wicket and then it just took off like a steam train and here we are 12 years later.

“I’m sitting there yesterday thinking, ‘This kid’s taken 500 test wickets. He’s at Australian legendary status’.

“It goes Warne, McGrath, Lyon … and I still think there’s plenty of petrol still in the tank.”

Lyon will hope to build on his enormous legacy when the Aussies next face Pakistan in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG.