Nathan Lyon
The injury that stopped the nation, the groundsman’s shed, and why it’s his family’s baggy green.
Some conversations you could let run all day. Sitting down with Nathan Lyon was one of them. Warm, honest, funny, and completely without ego. For a bloke who has played 141 Tests and taken more wickets than most of us could dream of, Gaz still talks like the kid from Young who cannot quite believe his luck.
The most watched hamstring in Australia
We had to start with the leg. Nath tore his hamstring clean off the bone in Adelaide, a grade three tear, fifteen centimetres of tendon, reattached two days before Christmas. He heard it go. He could not put his foot flat on the ground. And here is the part that tells you who he is. He did it on the same day Australia went three-nil up in the Ashes. While the boys celebrated, his emotions were riding high and low, but he would not be the Debbie Downer. “The job was done,” he told me. “I could sleep better at night.”
It’s just a game
Nath has been here before. When he tore his calf in 2023 he admits he was borderline depressed, the first serious injury of his life. This time he drew a line in the sand early, and what changed was perspective. “Firstly you’re a husband, a father, a son and a friend,” he said. “Then we move on to playing sport.” It is a simple idea, but it is the whole man in one sentence.
From the groundsman’s shed
Everyone knows Nathan Lyon the spinner. Fewer know Nathan Lyon the curator. He was three years into an apprenticeship at Manuka Oval when South Australia rang looking for an off-spinner. Incredibly, he said no, call me again in twelve months. Eight months later they did, and he ran across the ground in his steel-capped boots to ask his boss to sign him off. A few short weeks tending the Adelaide Oval turf, and he was on his way to the Australian Test team. You could not write it.
It’s my family’s baggy green
His debut still gives me goosebumps. Galle, Sri Lanka, Kumar Sangakkara on strike, and a first ball he thought was going for four. It spun, took the edge, and Michael Clarke pouched it. A wicket with his first ball in Test cricket. Two bits of advice got him there and have never left him: Mike Hussey’s “do it with a smile on your face,” and Ricky Ponting’s “back your skill.” And when he finally held the baggy green, he did not see it as his. “It’s my family’s baggy green,” he said, thinking of his brother Brendan, his mum and dad, and every sacrifice that got him there.
The dad, and the shadow
Nath spent his early years under Shane Warne’s shadow, and he was happy to. It was his dad, a farmer and a straight shooter, who kept him level: “You’re never as good as you think, and never as bad either.” He carries one line above all others when the critics circle. “Don’t worry about criticism from someone you wouldn’t ask advice from.” Years ago he even cancelled the local paper back in Young, so his mum and grandmother would not have to read the noise.
Giving it back
The thing that lit him up most was not cricket at all. It was Goated, the leadership program he has built with his father-in-law, backed by Westpac, taking real conversations into the bush. Nine towns, forty-two events, more than fifteen hundred people. The message that stuck with me: “We hope you don’t have a successful life. We hope you have a fulfilled life.” Success is judged by other people. Fulfilment is on your own terms. That is Nathan Lyon in a nutshell.
A good bloke from Young
He told a story about being a kid, driving an hour and a half each way to watch one day of cricket, and a player brushing him off for an autograph. He has never forgotten it, and it is why he stops for everyone now. That is the man I sat with. More than 140 Tests, and still just a good bloke from Young who wants to hand the next kid a reason to dream.
This one is worth your time.
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