Pitching in baseball is an arduous craft, so much so that its exponents tend to start only one in every five games. Heaven knows, then, what the St Louis Cardinals bullpen must have made of their honorary team-mate, Nathan Lyon, as he took to the mound at the London Stadium on Saturday to throw the ceremonial first pitch on a night off between his 99th and 100th consecutive Test matches.
It was on the Ashes tour to England a decade ago that Australia last played a Test without their spinner and, this morning at Lord's, Lyon was due to become just the sixth cricketer ever — and first specialist bowler — to reach a century of uninterrupted appearances.
