One hundred Tests in a row, a feat achieved by no specialist bowler in the game’s history. Beyond that, 122 Tests in a career that has never seen him miss one injured. The Australian men’s team in that span has played 126. So four omissions scattered across 2012 and 2013 remain the only Tests he has missed since his debut in 2011. And then, here, Nathan Lyon pinged a calf, the twang of those strained fibres reverberating forward through the Ashes contest to come.
The timing, just as he was celebrated for his durability, sucks. Of course it will give another outing to sport’s most tedious guffaw: the jinx, the mozz, the commentator’s curse. There’s nothing duller, that mix of dad joke and solipsism that lets the observer project themselves into the centre of the action where they have no claim to encroach. On pure probability, in any well-attended cricket ground, somebody has just said that a player is batting well a minute before they get out.
The jinx is the tepid, watered down version of something that perhaps once meant something: the idea of not tempting fate, or the Fates, the idea of hubris, the idea of gods or spirits, malevolent or capricious, who might overhear arrogant words and twist them into a lash to punish the speaker. Noticing a streak might make you anxious that it will end. Observation affects the subject. Voicing it might draw unwanted attention, mortal or supernatural.
There did seem to be something of the bolt from the blue, Lyon charging in from deep square leg to lunge for a catch that was too far away, then staying down as though zapped from above. He hobbled off with an arm around the physio, looking distraught. Cricket Australia has given its spiel about monitoring the situation and letting us know later, and perhaps he will pull up better than expected and return. For now, at least, it looks like the streak is over.
Lyon to that point had been Australia’s best performer of the day, having Zak Crawley stumped to nip short a punishing innings, keeping control where the fast bowlers went the journey. He was shaping up to be the most important in the series, after his vital drudge work and eight-wicket return in Birmingham. In the quest for 20 wickets against England’s attacking approach, his absence would hurt more than anyone’s.
That makes another chapter for Australia with Lord’s and injury, shaping one Ashes series and then the next. In 2019, Steve Smith was on cruise control heading for a third century in as many innings when Jofra Archer’s famous spell changed it all. A blow on the elbow limited his range of shots. Another on the neck knocked him to the ground, then off it.
Smith that day insisted on returning at the fall of the next wicket, a mad decision given he would be subbed out of the Test with concussion the next day. In that window before the symptoms were evident, he passed the medical test to continue, laying its shortcomings bare. Apparently his concern was posterity: “I can’t get on the honours board unless I’m batting,” was the line relayed by his coach, Justin Langer.
Resuming on 80, Smith played like a man impaired. Saying later that he wanted to defend but was incapable of playing those shots, he did two uncharacteristic things: swiping three boundaries, then getting out lbw. The player whose pads had been a distant unattainable shore for England’s bowlers managed to leave a straight one heading for middle, then sent his dismissal to the third umpire and walked off before the review was over. That erratic cameo complete, he sat in the dressing room looking desolate, out for 92.
It wasn’t that Smith didn’t have a hundred at Lord’s: he had filled his boots for 215 in the 2015 Ashes Test. He just wanted another entry on that nice wooden board. Four years after falling short, he now has it, his 110 in this match a huge innings for statistics. Passing Steve Waugh’s 3,173 Ashes runs leaves Smith behind only Jack Hobbs and Don Bradman on that measure. His dozenth Ashes century takes him level with Hobbs, the pair trailing Bradman. Smith also equalled Waugh’s mark of 32 Test centuries for Australia, bettered only by Ricky Ponting’s 41.
If Smith was downcast under duress in 2019, he was nearly as disappointed getting out this time. He had his hundred, but not a massive one, and on a good surface he might have been thinking that Australia’s 416 was short. To an extent he was right, with England turning on the run-scoring tap even though wickets fell. But if that missed milestone from years ago had been irritating him, he finally reached it after a lengthy wait. Lyon, on 496 Test wickets, might have to do the same.
