Australia’s captain, Pat Cummins, believes that veteran off-spinner Nathan Lyon can continue to build on his success and eventually overtake the great spinner Shane Warne to be the team’s top wicket-taker in Test format.
Lyon’s five wickets in the first Test match against Pakistan in Perth saw him join the exclusive club of 500 Test wickets. He trapped Faheem Ashraf in front of the stumps, making him his 500th victim in a Test match.
As he approaches the end of his career, the 36-year-old has amassed 501 wickets among the two Australian greats, Warne (708 wickets) and Glenn McGrath (563).
Although Lyon refrained from discussing if he might overtake the two Australian icons, Cummins challenged the off-spinner following his impressive achievement.
“At least four or five more years remain, with ten games annually. I believe you still have 40 or 50 Test matches left, which equates to four or five years and ten matches every year. A couple of hundred (wickets) at an average of four or five per game, which is seven hundred,” Cummins stated following their triumph, as cited by the ICC.