Australian veteran spinner Nathan Lyon feels that the Border-Gavaskar trophy has gradually risen in prestige to the Ashes series.  He also mentioned that it is getting a tougher challenge year by year in terms of beating the sub-continental cricketing giant.

Since 2017, Australia have not been able to win any of the three Border Gavaskar trophy series. Their most recent defeat came in the series that took place in 2020/2021,  a 2-1 defeat by India in the land down under.

“It’s massive. It’s getting very similar to Ashes series as the pinnacle series for an Australian cricketer,” Lyon said to Code Sports.

“This series with the (World) Test Championship on the line as well it’s going to be even more important and probably a bigger challenge… It’s about doing the basics, not getting too far ahead of ourselves and enjoying the challenge — I think that’s going to be the biggest one.”

Australia will be playing two away Test series in Asia for the World Test championship 2023 and Lyon feels that the experience will be nothing less of a challenge for the team despite of being an exciting prospect.

“There’s no point hiding behind it,” he said. “That’s one challenge we want to pride ourselves on — going out there and performing really well. This challenge is massive and it’s bloody exciting to be honest.”

Their most recent test encounter resulted in a series win against Pakistan under the leadership of Pat Cummins. It was Australia’s first away test win since 2016, and the first one in Asia since 2011. The previous win in Asia came against Sri Lanka in 2011, the same team they are going to face this time as well for a two match series. The recent win in Pakistan will definitely give the Aussies a boost ahead of their Asian encounters.

“We said it was going to be a hard-fought 15 days of cricket, and we were spot on. It was an absolutely incredible challenge for the whole 15 days and we saw the ups and downs of playing Test cricket in the subcontinent and how challenging it is,” Lyon further added.

“I was pretty disappointed that I wasn’t able to get the win. But also a bit realistic — sometimes you have got to take your hat off and say well played. Babar played an exceptional innings.

“Every time Babar hit a boundary it was like a half-full MCG screaming out and there was only about a quarter of the guys there. They love their cricket over there in Pakistan, but to be able to silence them by taking out Babar was pretty special.” Lyon said about the series in Pakistan.

(Inputs from IANS)