Australia spinner Nathan Lyon picked up five wickets to help his side in winning a historic Test series against Pakistan. The Pat Cummins-led Australia side won the third Test match of the series against Pakistan by 115 runs to clinch the three-match Test series.
Notably, the visitors won a Test series in Pakistan after 24 years.
Lyon's brilliant bowling
Lyon picked up his 19th five-wicket haul of his Test career and with this he became the sixth bowler in the history of Test cricket to pick up five wickets in eight different nations (Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies). Apart from Lyon, five other bowlers in this elite list are- Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne, Dale Steyn, Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram.
On March 25 (Friday), the 34-year-old Aussie spinner achieved another milestone as he became the first Australia bowler to claim a five-wicket-haul in Pakistan since former leg-spinner Stuart MacGill. Notably, MacGill had bagged five wickets in the Rawalpindi Test during Australia's 1998 tour of Pakistan.
In the third match of the recently concluded Test series, Australia had decided to declare their second innings at 227/3 and asked the hosts to chase a target of 351.
Terrific bowling
Australia skipper Pat Cummins scalped three wickets to bundle out the Pakistan team within a total of 235. Aussie pacer Mitchell Starc and medium pacer Cameron Green bagged one wicket to each to help their side in winning a memorable Test match.
Pakistan opening batter Imam-ul-Haq (70 runs off 199 balls) and skipper Babar Azam (55 runs off 104 balls) showed some resistance in the second innings but eventually the hosts could not avoid the defeat.
Australia skipper Cummins had previously bagged five wickets in the first innings of the third Test match and his match-winning bowling display helped him in earning a Man of the Match award.
On the other hand, Australia batter Usman Khawaja was adjudged as The Man of the Series.
Previously, the first Test match, played in Rawalpindi, ended as a draw. There was not much difference in the results of the second Test match, played in Karachi, as it ended in a draw as well.
