Nathan Lyon seeks Muttiah Muralitharan's help for his bowling ahead of Sri Lanka tour

One of the most underrated match winner for Australia in recent times, Nathan Lyon, is planning to call all-time leading wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan to get an insight about Sri Lanka before the Sri Lanka tour of Australia this July.

Lyon has previously worked with the bowling great for a brief period of time in 2014, when Murali worked as a consultant bowling coach for Australia and with a testing Sri Lankan tour lined up, renewal of their relationship can deliver huge benefits to the offspinner and Australia.

In a chat with cricket.com.au, Nathan Lyon said, “John Davison and myself were recently talking about a few comments that Murali said about how you should be bowling over on the sub-continent, So I'm looking forward to putting those into play and hopefully it will be good to catch up with him again over there. I’ll see if I can tee up to have a coffee at the hotel or even if we can get him down to a training session would be fantastic.”

The modest off-spinner accepted that he still has to learn a lot and interactions with the all-time great can be extremely benefitting. Though his bowling action differs from that of Murali, he was keen on taking whatever advice the 44-year-old has to offer as he believes they can do wonders for Lyon with the tour of India and Pakistan (home) scheduled in the next 12 months.

“It’s not so much technical, I’ve got a little bit different action to Murali,” said Lyon on the exact kind of advice that he is looking for. “It’s more mindset, and attacking and defending in sub-continental conditions. Just understanding the game, and somebody of his quality and what he was able to do in sub-continent conditions was pretty spectacular so if I can learn off him by just listening to him and talking to him then I’m heading in the right direction.”

“Going technical, I’m more consistent with my bowling. I’m a lot more confident in my skill – back when I made my debut I was quite raw, didn’t really know what was going on, I was just riding the roller coaster. Now I understand the game, I understand my role in the team, so I’m feeling really confident and looking forward to going over there,” Lyon concluded.

Nathan Lyon will definitely be Australia’s go-to man during their upcoming tours in the Indian subcontinent with pitches having a lot of turn and stickiness to offer.