Nathan Lyon’s luck runs out just as Steve Smith’s begins to turn | Geoff Lemon

While the bowler’s injury could seriously hamper Australia, his teammate’s 12th Ashes century suggests there is no need to panic

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.

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