New Delhi, March 26
Star Australia off-spinner Nathan Lyon was really impressed with the inexperienced spinners performances against India despite losing the series with a margin of 1-4 after winning the first Test at Hyderabad.
In the series, England left-arm spinner Tom Hartley was the leading wicket-taker in the series with 22 wickets in the five matches. He took wickets at an average of 36.13 and conceded runs at an economy of 3.17. Hartley bagged a fifer in the series with the best bowling figures been 7/62.
The other spinners, Shoaib Bahir and Rehan Ahmed, also grabbed some wickets in the three matches they were part of. On one side, Bashir took 17 wickets; on the other hand, Rehan took 11 wickets.
The experienced spinner asserted that had a very tough series to start with as they have to bowl to big players like Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill and many more in the debut series of the longest format of the game.
"All three of them to be honest with you. 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," Lyon said on the Willow Talk podcast as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.
Further the Australian cricketer stated that he is looking forward to meet Hartley at Lancashire and bowl along with him in the County Championship.
"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," the veteran bowler added.
In the end, Lyon further applauded the young off-spinner Bashir saying that the bowler has something special in him.
"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," the 36-year-old concluded.