If some of the talk this week is to be believed, there must have been US Marines dropped behind enemy lines that met with more hospitable welcomes than that which awaited Todd Murphy as he was parachuted into the Ashes today.
Murphy this morning became the first man not called Nathan Lyon to lead an Australian spin attack in more than a decade, making his Ashes bow with his side one draw away from retaining the Urn, but England expected to be in vengeful mood.
The idea that Headingley is to turn into some sort of Yorkshire Bombonera, full of England ultras baying for blood on the back of the Jonny Bairstow controversy, is probably a little far-fetched, but for a 22-year-old offie who had not, before today, bowled a single delivery in a game in this country at any level, one can think of quieter introductions.
The plan had been for one, too. Murphy was due to play the first part of the county season at Durham, only to be pulled out by Cricket Australia to manage his workload after he played a more prominent part than expected on the spring tour to India, where he made his Test debut.
There was even a late bid mid-Ashes to get Murphy into action for Durham via a visa loophole and a 48-hour trip to Paris, but unrest in France and a cancelled flight scuppered the scheme.
Excitement levels around Murphy’s potential from those who have seen him bowl back home, though, are high. The Victorian played his club cricket at St Kilda, known, of course, for helping produce Shane Warne, and having cycled through a dozen spinners searching for the great man’s successor before landing on Lyon, there is strong belief that Australia have found the next in line already.
“I sat with Todd in the last session there and spoke about spin bowling, as we do,” Lyon said on the fourth evening of last week’s Lord’s Test, having accepted that a calf injury was about to end his series. “I have a lot of confidence in Todd. He is a great kid, willing to learn along the way. His stock ball is good enough in international cricket. We have seen that in India.”
It was during that series, where he took seven wickets on debut and eventually that of Virat Kohli four times in six innings, that Murphy was branded the “future of Australian spin” by one of his predecessors, Kerry O’Keefe, but just a few months on he is being called into action as its present.
The tourists are reaping the rewards of having blooded the youngster in India as a second spinner alongside Lyon, when they might have plumped for more experience in the form of Mitch Swepson or Ashton Agar, but this will be the first week in which Murphy has gone into a Test match with the responsibility of playing as a sole front-line spinner. He does so having not played any competitive cricket at all since the Sheffield Shield Final in late March, that game just his 12th first-class match.
The pressure and expectation may be eased by the fact that Headingley is not traditionally viewed as a spinner’s paradise, though Jack Leach took 10 wickets on the ground against New Zealand last summer. As an aside, amid all the parallels with the 2019 epic here, it is nice that, in Leach’s absence, one team has still found room for a bespectacled tweaker.
Murphy is under no illusions at the treatment he can expect should the likes of Harry Brook, Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow get motoring
Given the openness with which England’s batters talked about taking Lyon on in the build-up to this series, and then tried to at Edgbaston, Murphy is under no illusions at the treatment he can expect should the likes of Harry Brook, Ben Stokes and Bairstow get motoring this week.
“He’s a good bowler, he’s just as good as Nathan Lyon,” England’s own spin coach Jeetan Patel said last week, in a rather eyebrow-raising assessment. “Nathan’s there, I suppose, because he has taken almost 500 Test wickets.”
That, of course, is a fairly significant difference, and Lyon’s are big shoes to fill. Australia are confident Murphy will be up to the task at some point. But this week? Only time will tell.
