Top 7 Spinners

[hendrix]

Originally Posted by Scaly piscine

Oh and anyone who rates Lyon in the same league as Swann needs their head examined. Utterly laughable.

Noone is saying he's as good as swann is now, but he's twice the bowler swann was at his age.

He needs to learn a few more tricks and he'll be very good.

I don't think Swann is that amazing, btw. Just a good, classical offspinner. Very good at what he does, but it's not unfeasible that Lyon could reach his level in a few years.

Originally Posted by Jono

Lyon was very disappointing on day 5 Hobart.

I understand that people are expecting the spinner to take wickets on the day 5 wicket, but if you look at the match situation I wasn't disappointed by his performance.

Stonewalling most spinners on that pitch would have been (relatively) easy on that wicket. He did his job IMO.

[greg]

Originally Posted by hendrix

Noone is saying he's as good as swann is now, but he's twice the bowler swann was at his age.

Very few people could really say how good Swann was at Lyon's age. He got picked for the tour of South Africa in 2000 (age 20/21), was diagnosed with "attitude problems" and was never given another chance until we finally managed to get rid of Fletcher. At which point he came in and was an instant success.

I understand that people are expecting the spinner to take wickets on the day 5 wicket, but if you look at the match situation I wasn't disappointed by his performance.

Stonewalling most spinners on that pitch would have been (relatively) easy on that wicket. He did his job IMO.

With the talk about Swann "outside the subcontinent". Stats are pretty meaningless in general. What every England fan will tell you is that when given a job to win a match on a fourth/fifth day pitch Swann has very rarely failed to deliver. (this has not always been the case with Monty, for example, who paradoxically has often been far more effective in the first innings). He was given little to work with in Australia. But given a fifth day at Adelaide, he finished the job as required.