*Official* Australia in Sri Lanka 2016

[Dan]

Classic Usman dismissal too.

 

[Gnske]

Sri Lankan """"""cricket""""""

 

[TheJediBrah]

Hopefully this is the series where O'Keefe finally cements a spot, and we can stop worrying about justifying Lyon's position on the grounds that he's been "ok".

I'm know I'm in the minority with this opinion, but Lyon is not, never has been and never will be even in the same league as O'Keefe when it comes to effectiveness. SOK has been the best spinner in Australia by far for well 5-6 years at least. Guy should have played 70-80 tests by now.

That's not even taking batting ability into consideration at all.

**** the haters

 

[Gob]

Hopefully this is the series where O'Keefe finally cements a spot, and we can stop worrying about justifying Lyon's position on the grounds that he's been "ok".

I'm know I'm in the minority with this opinion, but Lyon is not, never has been and never will be even in the same league as O'Keefe when it comes to effectiveness. SOK has been the best spinner in Australia by far for well 5-6 years at least. Guy should have played 70-80 tests by now.

That's not even taking batting ability into consideration at all.

**** the haters

How can you compare their effectiveness when Lyon has been bowling to international batsmen while O'keefe has been bowling to domestic blokes.

 

[TheJediBrah]

How can you compare their effectiveness when Lyon has been bowling to international batsmen while O'keefe has been bowling to domestic blokes.

Very difficult, obviously. But at best all you can say is that there is no evidence either way in that regard.

O'Keefe has out-bowled Lyon an overwhelming majority of the times they've played together, both in terms of skill + figures and he has ridiculously better statistics in every aspect

I have every confidence that O'Keefe would have done a much better job than Lyon had he been playing for the last 5 years, in bowling alone.

The best you can say in support of Lyon is that he's "looked good" and "mostly hasn't been terrible".

 

[adub]

Gimme Gimme Gimme SOK Treatment

 

[GotSpin]

You're expecting consistency from SK Warne? He's quite capable of doing both in the same commentary stint, if not the same sentence.

No way. Warne holds onto his grudges like grim death. Admirable trait

 

[Dan]

Very difficult, obviously. But at best all you can say is that there is no evidence either way in that regard.

O'Keefe has out-bowled Lyon an overwhelming majority of the times they've played together, both in terms of skill + figures and he has ridiculously better statistics in every aspect

I have every confidence that O'Keefe would have done a much better job than Lyon had he been playing for the last 5 years, in bowling alone.

The best you can say in support of Lyon is that he's "looked good" and "mostly hasn't been terrible".

The thing is though, bowling spin at lower levels is very, very different to bowling spin at Test level (especially finger spin, and especially in Australia).

Bowling offies/orthodox in Aus, overspin is key. Up until that level you'll hear a lot about threatening both edges -- something SoK does very well with his ability to slide arm balls down the inside edge, and use the potential of turn (albeit not massive sidespin) to threaten the outside edge. Take the step up to Test level, and the commensurate increase in batting ability and the general meh-ness of pitches means that it becomes very hard to genuinely threaten both edges as a finger spinner; you have to start beating guys in bounce and with drift. Hence Lyon.

Look at SoK's FC dismissals. So many of them are LBWs or guys getting bowled trying to cut; he slides balls on with the arm and convinces batsmen to play for turn that never comes and uses natural variation well; despite not being a huge turner of the ball, his variations are primarily sidespin-based -- be accurate, beat them off the pitch. Transferring that up a level is harder; while he'll remain accurate, beating guys off the pitch is difficult unless the batsmen are ****, the pitches are crumbling or you're an absolutely awesome bowler. Now I love me some SoK, but give him regular Test cricket on flat decks and he's far more likely than Lyon to be spending a fair chunk of time as a holding bowler, trying to beat elite batsmen off the pitch and getting precisely nowhere.

Lyon uses overspin more. He beats guys in the air, he gets it to drift and bounce. He's looking for entirely different modes of dismissal to SoK -- more likely to aim for close catches from hitting the splice than to ping guys LBW with arm balls. That makes Lyon comparatively bad vis-a-vis O'Keefe in Shield cricket; O'Keefe's set-up is absolutely perfect to take advantage of Shield batsmen who are poor against spin -- it's more difficult to scale up than Lyon's model of utilising bounce beating guys in the air.

Maybe SoK would have done better than Lyon -- he's one hell of a spinner -- but I don't see that as an issue with Lyon or his selection, really. Lyon's style of off spin bowling, while less successful than O'Keefe's at Shield level, is arguably more scaleable to Test cricket.

 

[Dan]

tl;dr Lyon and SoK are two very different styles of finger spinner, can't really blame the selectors for opting for Lyon's style.

Would love to see them do a Swann/Panesar 2012 demolition job for the next few years though.

 

[Spark]

It was a running joke for quite a while that Lyon was rubbish at any level of FC cricket that wasn't Tests.

 

[Daemon]

If Lyon doesn't fix his slow deck game I think we might see a horses for courses selection when they next go to UAE/SC. It's not in the calender for like a year at least so they'll probably forget by then but hey.

 

[TheJediBrah]

tl;dr Lyon and SoK are two very different styles of finger spinner, can't really blame the selectors for opting for Lyon's style.

Would love to see them do a Swann/Panesar 2012 demolition job for the next few years though.

Yes I've heard all of this a hundred times before and am quite aware of the reasons why Lyon is preferred by the selectors, whether they are really legitimate or not. Doesn't mean I agree with them in the slightest and don't believe they are almost entirely rubbish, practically speaking. As I said, it's just my opinion.

There's absolutely no empirical evidence anywhere to support Lyon in this comparison. It's all "feelings" and "oh he's this type of bowler which is better for x and worse for y". There's a lot of empirical evidence supporting O'Keefe in said comparison however.

Unless O'Keefe gets a run in the Test team, playing in home conditions as well as away, and does genuinely worse than Lyon there never will be any way to empirically tell if he would have been better. Saying "Test batsmen are different to Shield batsman", "have to be a different type of bowler" are all great buzz words but mean absolute **** all in my books. Cricket has proven time and time again that expectations about the effectiveness player types & techniques are very often inaccurate.

nb: Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the effort that went into your post regarding their different bowling types. it was well thought out and clearly not outright "wrong" in any way. I just disagree that it really means anything in practice.

 

[adub]

The old SOK/Lyon debate has been going for years (I might have even started it). Obviously I come down on the side of the argument. Whatever you can say about 'style' or 'method' or any other subjective measure you care to name to claim Lyon has done better with the tests he has got to play than O'Keefe would have the simple inarguable objective fact is that when they play together SOK returns the better figures. Not just 51% of the time which you could put down to luck or conditions or whatever. He does it 2/3rds of the time (64% in fc and 100% so far in tests). Tbf not all of those 'wins' were huge either way for either player, but if anything this favours Lyon as in three of the innings he returned better figures O'Keefe bowled the grand total of 4 overs (not 4 overs each - 4 overs across three innings). Out of the 28 innings in fc they've played together Lyon has taken 46 wickets @36.04. O'Keefe has 54 @ 23.22. In the three test innings it's 5 @ 68.00 v 7 @ 40.29.

So from the (admittedly limited) evidence so far both bowlers do pretty much the same as their overall average when playing together (Lyon 36.04 v 36.59, SOK 23.22 v 23.82). There simply is no evidence apart from feelpinions to base the idea that SOK would not have done at least as good a job as Lyon has if he got the chance to play tests back in 2010/11 when he had clearly earned the shot over all the other mongs that got a go. Equally there is no subjective evidence to support the idea that O'Keefe won't continue to significantly outperform Lyon in the matches they play together. It could happen of course, but the data collected so far indicates that over the long term they will both return at about their career rate and whilst Lyon's returns are good, O'Keefe's would be exceptional for any kind of bowler, they are simply immense for a SLO bowler who plays in Australia. You've got to go back to uncovered pitches to find finger spinners with the sort of numbers SOK has.

I'm really looking forward to seeing both working together in the Test series. Frankly I think they'll destroy what Starc and Haze leave em after the ball gets a little old.

I love Lyon. Truly one of my favourite players. But I still reckon SOK will outbowl him in the tests and also clearly outbat him as you'd expect. That is going to put some real questions to the selectors as they struggle find new excuses for keeping O'Keefe out of the side.

 

[Dan]

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I think SoK is a brilliant bowler and deserves to have played many more Tests than he has -- he was the mind-numbingly obvious choice in 2010/11 ("We want an SLA bowler to **** with KP, SoK just demolished 'em in the tour match...OH HEY XAVIER DOHERTY"), and every time they decided to inexplicably drop Lyon, SoK should have been the one playing in his place. And every time they went with two spinners, should have been SoK.

Given we're discussing a pure hypothetical based on stylistic/aesthetic feelpinions here, I completely get where you guys are coming from.

I think the comparison is made much, much harder by Lyon's FC vs Tests weirdness: take away his 195 Test poles, and his FC record is 107 @ 43ish. I mean, if a guy flukes 40-odd Test wickets at 10 runs less than his career FC average, you put it down to form/circumstance/pure luck. When you've sustained that for over 50 Tests, and still reverted to shite when playing non-Test FC, it looks less like a fluke and more like something technical. Which, to me at least, reduces the utility of FC comparisons between the two since Test Lyon =/= FC Lyon and there's not enough Test SoK to base things on.

tl;dr Nathan Lyon is ****ing weird.

 

[Dan]

Man I want SoK to dominate this series.

 

[Burgey]

Nathan Lyon remains the WPNCOS. His status in unchallenged. SOK will; be a great foil for him in this series and hopefully moving ahead, because quite apart from what he brings as a SLA bowler, his batting should be very handy when we suffer the inevitable lollapses we've had in recent years at important times through different series.

 

[TheJediBrah]

If I were to hazard a guess regarding Lyon's better Test figures it would be that in Tests (at home at least) he's bowling to players in unfamiliar, bouncy conditions whereas in the Shield he's bowling to batsman in very familiar conditions. Also bowling with Test quality quicks at the other end tying the batsman down so they get out to him doesn't hurt.

 

[adub]

Nathan Lyon remains the WPNCOS. His status in unchallenged. SOK will; be a great foil for him in this series and hopefully moving ahead, because quite apart from what he brings as a SLA bowler, his batting should be very handy when we suffer the inevitable lollapses we've had in recent years at important times through different series.

I don't have an argument with any of that Burgs. I'm mostly just thankful that after 5 years or so the selectors have finally seemed to accept that Lyon and SOK are clearly our best two spin options.

If Lyon has a good series (even if SOK has a slightly better one) then he will keep his place when we go back to bouncy decks because WPNCOS.

But if SOK towels em up with bat and ball like the warm up?

I wouldn't be discounting the possibility. I reckon this series is almost made to measure for O'Keefe.

 

[Burgey]

The decks here are very true though, they've been a graveyard for finger spinners since forever. I just think we have to accept that, despite looking like a straight-armed version of one of the aliens from Mars Attacks, Lyon bowls pretty well. I expect him to take 27 wickets at 4.3 this series.

 

[Dan]

If I were to hazard a guess regarding Lyon's better Test figures it would be that in Tests (at home at least) he's bowling to players in unfamiliar, bouncy conditions whereas in the Shield he's bowling to batsman in very familiar conditions. Also bowling with Test quality quicks at the other end tying the batsman down so they get out to him doesn't hurt.

Yeah, this is a point Peter McIntyre has made too -- he found it easier to bowl to Test teams in tour matches than to Australian domestic players, simply because of the familiarity with conditions; domestic guys are less worried by bounce and overspin because they're so used to it (I mean, Warne took his Victoria wickets at ~35 each). Obviously the Shield now is nothing on the 90s, but the point may well still stand. Drawn even more sharply into focus by Lyon historically struggling on the subcontinent, where the ball simply doesn't bounce and he doesn't have the sidespin variation to compensate.