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Nathan Lyon to seek advice from Muttiah Muralitharan

Nathan Lyon is five short of 200 Test wickets
Image: Nathan Lyon is five short of 200 Test wickets

Australia's premier off-spinner Nathan Lyon plans to call on all-time leading wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan for bowling advice during his team's tour to Sri Lanka in July.

Lyon is just five wickets away from becoming the first Australian off-spinner to claim 200 Test victims and is keen to gather further insights from the Sri Lanka great, who worked briefly with him as a consultant bowling coach in 2014.

He said on Monday that a renewal of that relationship would deliver benefits when bowling in the Sri Lanka series.

"[Mentor] John Davison and myself were recently talking about a few comments that Murali said about how you should be bowling over on the sub-continent," Lyon told the Cricket Australia website.

"So I'm looking forward to putting those into play and hopefully it will be good to catch up with Murali again over there. If we can get him down to a training session that would be fantastic."

Muttiah Muralitharan has worked with Lyon before
Image: Muttiah Muralitharan has worked with Lyon before

Lyon said he still had much to learn and while he differs from Muralitharan in finger-spinning, he was keen to take any advice from the 44-year-old ahead of Tests against spin specialists Sri Lanka and India on the sub-continent as well as in Australia against Pakistan over the next 12 months.

"It's not so much technical, I've got a little bit different action to Murali," Lyon said. "It's more mindset, and attacking and defending in sub-continental conditions.

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"Just understanding the game, and somebody of his quality and what he was able to do in sub-continent conditions was pretty spectacular so if I can learn off him by just listening to him and talking to him then I'm heading in the right direction."

Muralitharan is the only bowler to claim 800 Test wickets. He also took more than 500 one-day scalps.

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