Tom Hartley snubs R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja to name the spinner he's most keen to learn from

England’s left-arm off-spinner Tom Hartley has expressed his eagerness to play alongside Australia’s veteran right-arm-off spinner Nathan Lyon as it might help the Englishman. Both of them are all set to play together in the English county season for Lancashire later this year. Hartley and Lyon are currently on national duty with the former on a tour of India while the latter is in New Zealand for a 2-match Test series.

Tom Hartley recently earned a lot of plaudits for his exploits against India in the 5-match Test series. The left-arm finger spinner is currently the leading wicket-taker of the series with Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, and Ravichandran Ashwin, all below him despite having more experience.

Everything about Tom Hartley’s performance in India

When the English team named Tom Hartley as one of their frontline spinners for their Test tour of India, not many believed that the player would be able to do something significant. However, he turned everything around in the 1st Test at Hyderabad itself when he returned with 9 wickets in total, playing a key role in England’s shock 28-run win.

Hartley would claim the wickets of Shubman Gill and KL Rahul for 23 and 86 respectively in the 2nd innings of the match. Then during England’s 2nd innings with the bat, he scored 34 runs and then gob-smacked the Indian batting order with his extremely smart game plan.

Tom Hartley first claimed the Indian openers – Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal for 39 and 15 and then followed up with the wickets of Gill, Axar Patel, KS Bharat, Ravi Ashwin, and Mohammed Siraj. His bowling performance was pretty crucial and was complimentary for number 3 batter Ollie Pope who had scored 196 from the 231-run target England posted.

Although Hartley could not bag the Man of the Match award the tone was set for him to go on and replicate the same in the next matches. In the 2nd Test at Vizag where England lost by 106 runs, Hartley returned with 5 wickets combined, 1 in the 1st innings and 4 in the 2nd.

In the 3rd Test at Rajkot, Tom Hartley remained quiet even if the track was spin-friendly as he scalped 2 wickets across innings. It was that kind of a Test match for England as they endured a 434-run loss, one of their biggest losses ever in Test cricket.

And in the most recent 4th Test at Ranchi, the 24-year-old registered 1 and 3 wickets across innings as his team lost the series by 3-1. He currently has 20 wickets to his name and with one more Test to go, Hartley would aim for nothing less than registering another multiple-wicket performance at Dharamshala.

Hartley hoping to replicate Nathan Lyon

During a recent interview with BBC, Tom Hartley had high praise for Nathan Lyon and believes the Aussie can come to his aid.

“He’s someone I want to try to replicate. To be an international cricketer you have to able to perform in different conditions and Nathan is a guy that can really help me. I hope he’s going to be fantastic for me and be a real game-changer. The type of bowler he is something I’m trying to work on. The way he operates in Australia on pretty flat wickets, there are times when English wickets are pretty similar. He’s going to be great to learn off.” – Hartley said via BBC.