Veteran Australia off-spinner Nathan Lyon, on Wednesday, stated that he and his team are aiming for a clean sweep over Pakistan in the upcoming Test series that sees the two sides clashing for the first time on Pakistani soil since 1998.
The 36-year-old in a pre-series presser looked confident as he opened up about the upcoming first Test which is to be played at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium from March 4.
He said: "It’s going to be a big challenge, but I’m going into this Test series thinking we’re going to be performing and playing our best cricket to win 3-0. We haven’t played an away Test since 2019 … it’s a very young, exciting Australian test squad that we’ve got here and we’re coming off a pretty spectacular summer.”
Also talking about the short preparation span before the all-important series, Lyon said, "We’ve got enough people to cover all the bases. Whatever team we go out with, we’re confident we can play a really, really positive brand of cricket here in Pakistan.”
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Lyon, who also has a good record on subcontinental pitches, opened up about his feeling of bowling on Pakistani pitches for the first time in his career. He has 95 wickets in 19 Test matches against the likes of India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh on subcontinent pitches.
"There’s not much grass on it. It’s going to be pretty shiny come day one … pretty nice to bat on the first couple of days. Then we’ll look to hopefully spin and reverse swing may come into it," said the off-spinner.
Also, speaking about the part-time Aussie spinners in Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne, the veteran Lyon looked particularly confident about their contributions.
He said, "So we’re very lucky in that area. We’ve seen both Marnus and Smithy play a role in taking some big wickets. I think they will have the opportunity to get the ball at some stage.”
With 415 wickets in 105 test matches, Lyon will share the major workload of Australian spinners. He will have Ashton Agar and Mitchell Swepson for company as well.
(The Associated Press inputs)
