Cricket legend Kim Hughes SLAMS ‘woeful’ Test crowds as Nathan Lyon spins Australia to victory

The first Test between Australia and the West Indies has hardly caused a ripple on Perth’s sporting radar, with former captain Kim Hughes calling the small attendance pitiful.

Just 7,846 fans turned out at the 60,000-seat Optus Stadium on Saturday for day four, one of the lowest ever attendances for a Test day of cricket in Perth, to see Australia claim a 164-run victory.

It continued to be poorly attended for the first three days.

A total of 10,929 fans were in attendance on the first day, followed by crowds of 8,695 and 11,272.

The crowd on Saturday was the lowest of all, despite not falling on a traditional school day or weekday.

Cricket Australia has been heavily criticized for scheduling the Perth Test to start on a Wednesday and for a lack of promotion.

The unappetizing start date was caused by the tight scheduling window after the Twenty20 World Cup and the three-match ODI series against England.

It was also made to better suit primetime television audiences for fans in the eastern states.

Hughes, a proud Western Australian who captained the Test team from 1978 to 1984, was surprised by the low turnout on Saturday.

It’s a surprise. It’s very disappointing,’ he told ABC radio.

‘I would have thought maybe 15 [thousand] or 18,000 since it is Saturday and many people do not work. And it’s a beautiful day, it’s very nice inside the earth.

‘It’s [the low crowd] It is unfortunate […] horrible.

‘It’s in the best interest of the East Coast that the game starts the day it starts. It suits the east coast. Even if they started this on a Thursday, then you might have had a Saturday and a Sunday to plan.

The miserable crowds were also a talking point during England’s recent 3-0 ODI shutout of Australia, with just 10,406 rocking out for the final match.

It was the lowest crowd for an ODI involving Australia at the MCG.

On the pitch, Nathan Lyon became Test Cricket’s second most prolific player behind Muttiah Muralitharan after going 6-128 in the fourth innings at Perth as he ripped out the tourists’ hearts on the final morning before that they were driven off by 333 in pursuit. 498 for the win.

Australia were forced to work hard for victory just four days into the second Test, as the tourists lost four wickets in the first session on the final day, but then dragged the game to tea.

The hosts also did without captain Pat Cummins, who has some doubts for Adelaide as he did nothing more than jog across the pitch and didn’t bowl while recovering from a quadriceps injury.

How the world’s top-ranked bowler recovers will now be a point of interest for the next three days, and the speed ace says he has more hope than Australia’s medical staff.

Travis Head also claimed two wickets in the win, including ending an 82-run seventh-wicket position finish that had frustrated Australia when he bowled Alzarri Joseph after his entertaining 43rd.

Lyon then caught Roston Chase (55) deep and unleashed the next ball from number 11 Kemar Roach to crown his heroism.

His haul took him past Ravichandran Ashwin (442) and to eighth among Test wicket-takers overall, with 446.

Only Muralitharan stands above the pair as the game’s most successful derivative, with 800 untouchable wickets to his name.

Lyon and Ashwin, 36, are set for an exciting battle in India next February, with India also set to play two Tests against Bangladesh before then.

Once derided for an apparent inability to close out games on day five late in his career, Lyon’s haul also made him only the third Australian to take 100 wickets in the fourth innings, after Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath.

“Now he has a lot of different tricks,” Cummins said.

‘You saw him bowl over the wicket, around the wicket a lot. You felt that you could win [the batsmen] on the outside of the bat, bring the bat pad into play.

“He just feels like he has a few different ways he can serve a hitter, and he’s more happy to cut and switch between them rather than earlier in his career.”

Lyon took out Kyle Mayers in the sixth over of the day when he had the versatile man caught in the slip, before lobbing one past Kraigg Brathwaite.

After the tourists captain hit his century on day four, Lyon went flatter and played the ball back to Brathwaite’s stump on 110.

The spinner had delivered the other crucial blow at the end of day four, with Jermaine Blackwood caught at the bat-pad on 24 after he and Brathwaite had built up a 58-run standing.

“One thing he’s always been good at, but he just keeps getting better and better, is that he can bowl 25 to 30 quality overs in a day,” Cummins said of Lyon.

There aren’t a lot of bowlers who can do that.

The victory keeps alive the team’s hopes of securing a place in the World Test Championship final before traveling to India, with a flawless home summer likely to be enough to do so.

Beyond Lyon’s grounds on Sunday, the match belonged to Marnus Labuschagne, after he helped set up Australia’s 4d-598 in the first innings and 2d-182 in the second.

The Queenslander’s 204 and 104 made him only the eighth player in history to back a double century with a ton in the same match, giving Australia the chance to have five sessions to beat the Windies.