We continue our countdown of the best Test bowling performances on Australian soil since 2000
Top 20 in 2020: The best Test bowling, No.2
We've already counted down the 20 best Test moments and 20 best Test batting performances so far this century, and now it’s the turn of the bowlers!
The same criteria applies; performances have to be from Test matches since 2000 on Australian soil, with extra weight given to those that have come in famous victories for a bowler's team.
Before you get into this countdown, make sure you take a look at our Top 20 batting and Top 20 moments from earlier this year.
Re-live the countdown in full: 20-18 | 17-15 | 14-12 | 11-9 | 8-6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1
2) Nathan Lyon, 5-134 & 7-152
Australia v India, Adelaide, 2014
Image Id: 8857298ED5AD4A958353D0B51C51FA8CNathan Lyon entered the final act of the 2014-15 summer's poignant first Test hauling a heavier burden than most 27-year-olds can feasibly expect to shoulder in the workplace.
It was less than three weeks since he had born harrowing witness to the accidental blow that felled and ultimately ended the life of his Australia and South Australia colleague Phillip Hughes.
Lyon – who was fielding at mid-on when Hughes was struck while batting at the SCG that Tuesday afternoon – had carried the air of haunted man in the bleak days that followed, frozen in the moment that he and his close friend made fleeting eye contact before he collapsed on the pitch.
But while Hughes's passing rightly overshadowed more ephemeral matters such as the winning or otherwise of Test matches, it was difficult to fully disregard other considerations that accompanied Lyon on to Adelaide Oval, where the fortunes of his still-grieving team apparently rested in his right hand.
Notwithstanding the prevailing truths that Indian batsmen are the world's most adept at countering spin bowling and that the new drop-in Adelaide pitch bore little resemblance to the one Lyon used to tend in his days there as a curator's assistant, it's the spinner's job to win Tests on the final day.
That's what the slow bowlers are there for, says the collective wisdom of the game's greats from the comfort of retirement and its worldwide supporter base from the lessons of history.
Test matches that stretch into the fifth day are invariably decided by the bowling team's spinners attacking on a surface that has been dried out, cracked up and gouged deep by four previous days of high impact and summer weather.
However, Lyon's inability to grasp such a gift on earlier occasions had become the caveat to most coffee shop conversations about his credentials as Australia's foremost spin bowler.
Image Id: E012ED920CD349C0A27714C9BA875171Even though his 120 wickets from 35 and a half Tests to that point made him the most potent finger spinner the nation had produced in more than a century.
And despite having set that benchmark at a younger age than all-time greats of the spinner's craft including Derek Underwood (England), Lance Gibbs (West Indies), Hugh Tayfield (South Africa) and Erapalli Prasanna (India).
Sceptics pointed to Lyon's inability to scythe through batting line-ups when bowling on the fifth day of previous Tests against the West Indies (Dominica, 2012), South Africa, (Cape Town, 2014), Pakistan (UAE, 2014) and – most pointedly – South Africa in Adelaide in November 2012 followed by Sri Lanka in Hobart a month later.
In the wake of the Hobart match in which Lyon went wicketless in Sri Lanka's second innings – and which Australia won comfortably – the game's most successful spin bowler Muthiah Muralidaran took aim.
"Australia doesn't have the person to take wickets on a turning wicket," Muralidaran said at the time.
However, it was the dispiriting draw against South Africa at Adelaide – where Australia needed six wickets for a final-day victory and ended up two short with Lyon returning figures of 3-49 from 50 stoutly defended overs – that had left the most indelible imprint in the minds of critics.
Having failed to snare a final-day wicket until the Test's last hour – when he dismissed a hobbled Jacques Kallis – Lyon was accused of bowling too defensively, and of playing the role of foil to the seamers rather than matchwinner in his own right.
"He (Lyon) had been asked to do the wrong thing and he was doing it very well," surmised former Australia legspinner Stuart MacGill after that match.
And when Lyon returned from the UAE series that preceded that 2014 Adelaide Test with three wickets at 140 in conditions where Pakistan's spinners dominated, not even his five-wicket bag in the first innings against India soothed the sceptics.
Image Id: 0EC429E9829447C3ACAAA0A7850B1334Except, that is, for Australia's pre-eminent member of the ex-spinner's club, Shane Warne, who had seen enough in Lyon’s first innings performance in Adelaide and the changes brought about through input from Lyon's long-time mentor John Davison to forecast that a "bag" of wickets loomed.
"When Nathan Lyon bowls his best, he flights the ball, he's got shape, he gets the ball to dip and spin," Warne told cricket.com.au as the Test hung in the balance.
"In the UAE, he was bowling fast and into the pitch - I don't know why he was doing that and I don't know who told him to do that, but it didn't work and it didn't look good and the results were there too.
"I think the way Davo (Davison) and Nathan Lyon have worked together, what I'm seeing here in Adelaide, and what I saw when I worked with Nathan Lyon as well, I think he is going to be very, very successful when he bowls like that."
True to the long-suffering spin bowler's art, that success did not come quickly as India began the final day in pursuit of a history-making 364 for victory and Lyon's repeated and reverberating shouts for lbw and close-in catches – in the era before the Decision Review System was mandatory – were rebuffed by umpire Marais Erasmus.
When India began the last session needing 159 runs from 37 overs with eight wickets in hand, with two well-set batsmen (Murali Vijay on 85 and Virat Kohli on 82) and Lyon carrying figures of 1-91 from 21 overs, the unprecedented emotion Australia took into the Test was slowly eroding into another unthinkable disappointment.
But at the start of his fifth over of that epic final session, Lyon finally got the nod from Erasmus to remove Vijay for 99 and from there the fairytale finish unfolded at pace as Lyon put the ghosts of Test matches past and the torment of the weeks prior behind him.
India lost 8-73 from that moment, Lyon grabbing 6-36 in a nine-over blur of loop and bounce, defence and counter-attack, near misses and unrestrained celebrations.
The last of those was the heartfelt group huddle that grew organically alongside the '408' – Hughes's Australia Test number – that had been painted on the grass and become a centrepiece of the many tributes that had flowed during an uplifting match.
Image Id: DA989C378FE64DF8B177D122C5CFEB1A"It confirms to him (Lyon) that he's a match winner," injured and drained Australia captain Michael Clarke said of his spinner and man-of-the-match at Test's end.
“It's experience, just playing and living the roller-coaster ride of international sport, going through the ups and downs and feeling the disappointment when you don't produce the result you want.
“But then inside knowing that you can do it."
It is knowledge that is now widespread.
Top 20 in 2020: Best Test bowling
20) James Pattinson v New Zealand, Brisbane, 2011
19) Glenn McGrath v England, Brisbane, 2006
18) Anil Kumble v Australia, Sydney, 2004
17) Mohammad Asif v Australia, Sydney, 2010
16) Peter Siddle v England, Brisbane, 2010
15) Rene Farrell v England, Sydney, 2011
14) Glenn McGrath v Pakistan, Perth, 2004
13) Jasprit Bumrah v Australia, Melbourne, 2018
12) Michael Clarke v India, Sydney, 2008
11) Mitchell Johnson v South Africa, Perth, 2008
10) Vernon Philander v Australia, Hobart, 2016
9) Glenn McGrath v West Indies, Brisbane, 2000
8) Mitchell Johnson v England, Perth, 2010
7) Doug Bracewell v Australia, Hobart, 2011
6) Ajit Agarkar v Australia, Adelaide, 2003
5) Mitchell Johnson v England, Brisbane, 2013
4) Shane Warne v England, Adelaide, 2006
3) Dale Steyn v Australia, Melbourne, 2008
2) Nathan Lyon v India, Adelaide, 2014
1) Mitchell Johnson v England, Adelaide, 2013