Lyth: Golf is the secret of my success
FIRST impressions are not necessarily the best. When Adam Ly t h scratched around for 22 in a Championship match against Nottinghamshire in 2008, Graeme Swann branded him a ‘walking wicket’.
‘But then,’ Swann added. ‘He proved us all wrong.’
Lyth, one of six Yorkshire players in the England squad that left Heathrow yesterday for three Tests in the Caribbean, hit back in that match seven years ago with a second-innings 132. Wisden later called him ‘the find of the season’.
Now he finds himself competing with Jonathan Trott to be Alastair Cook’s opening partner at the first Test in Antigua on April 13. It has been quite a rise.
‘I was over the moon when I was told about my selection,’ he told Sportsmail. ‘I can’t wait to get going.’
The story of Lyth’s ascent, from a talented but inconsistent left-hander to the ballast behind Yorkshire’s charge to the Championship last season is one of grit, nous and no little skill. He finished with 1,489 runs — more than anyone in the country — six hundreds and a welter of awards.
In fact, much of the hard work had been done before the season began, prompted by a moderate 2013 which forced him to work on his concentration levels.
Yorkshire’s sports psychologist Scott Hartley came up with the idea of harnessing Lyth’s love of golf — his handicap is eight — to get him holing one short putt after another. The challenge lay not in the task itself, but in its repetition.
‘ There’s no skill in sinking a two-foot putt,’ said Lyth. ‘ It’s just about concentration. It’s a bit like batting and not giving your wicket away. You try not to do something silly.’
After 213 successful putts, he missed. But the point had been made. Lyth set about 2014 with renewed focus.
‘It wasn’t just the concentration side of the game — my confidence changed, too,’ he said. ‘I got runs early on against the university sides, then played well at Taunton. It just snowballed from there.’
At a time when England’s Test batsmen have lost the knack of scoring the ‘daddy hundreds’ once espoused by former batting coach Graham Gooch, Lyth’s remorselessness caught the selectors’ eye.
He made 230 at Northampton, putting on 375 for the first wicket with the highly rated Alex Lees, then 251 against Lancashire at Old Trafford, one short of Darren Lehmann’s Roses record. ‘One of my things is that I’ve never got enough runs,’ said Lyth. ‘If you’re going to get a hundred, you may as well make it a big one.’
Lyth’s dedication has been evident for years. His mum Christine would drive him from game to game in his teenage years, and he spent two seasons trialling as a midfielder with Manchester City before deciding to throw in his lot with cricket (his brother Ashley played for Leicester and Scarborough).
And his reluctance to talk about his footballing days tells of a man who wants to be judged by his run- making alone. When he phoned his mum to tell her about his selection, she was ‘ very emotional’. As the home summer got under way yesterday with six university fixtures across the country, it was easy to forget that the first-class season actually began late last month in the Middle East. And, in the now annual fixture in Abu Dhabi between MCC and the champion county, Lyth made 113 and 46 not out as Yorkshire won by nine wickets.
Watching on was Cook, who will have a big say in whether he walks out to bat in Antigua with Lyth or Trott, ready to play again after leaving the Ashes tour in November 2013 because of a stress-related condition.
Lyth is suitably complimentary about a player with 49 Test caps to his name and an average pushing 47. ‘He deserves his recall. He had a fantastic summer with Warwickshire and showed his class in South Africa with the Lions.
‘It’ll be very hard to keep the likes of him out of the side. I’ve just got to concentrate on myself and impress in the nets.’
The putting green may get a visit, too.