LAWRENCE BOOTH: Losing Nathan Lyon could have the power to change the series for Australia

For a moment, it looked innocuous. Nathan Lyon did no more than pull up after running in from deep backward square, having failed to reach a top edge from Ben Duckett. Then he flexed his right calf. And then he hobbled a bit, hoping for the best, maybe fearing the worst.

By the time Lyon was being examined by an Australian medic over the rope in front of the Grand Stand, his team-mates were holding their breath. And when he was helped towards the pavilion, wincing and grimacing, it was tempting to wonder whether Lyon – the leading wicket-taker in the early stages of these Ashes – had already sent down his final ball of the summer.

Calf injuries can be debilitating at the best of times, and a statement from Australia’s dressing-room didn’t immediately suggest the best of times. Lyon would be assessed after play, and a further update, ‘if available’, would be shared this morning.

If he is ruled out for the next few weeks, and therefore – in this most truncated of Ashes – from the final three matches, it will be no sort of reward for a superb off-spinner who in this game has become the first bowler to play 100 successive Tests.

Comparisons have been rife this summer with 2005, and the gut feeling was that here we had another. Eighteen years ago, before the start of the second Test at Edgbaston, Glenn McGrath trod on a stray ball in the outfield and twisted his ankle, ruling him out of both that game and the fourth Test at Trent Bridge. In his absence, England won both.

Leading wicket-taker Nathan Lyon was forced off the field after picking up a calf injury 

The player – who shone at Edgbaston – will wait nervously to see if he can return on English soil

Lyon is no McGrath, but he is not far behind. Like McGrath in 2005, he was Australia’s match-winning bowler in the first Test: Lyon took eight wickets at Edgbaston to McGrath’s nine at Lord’s. And while McGrath finished his career with 563 all told, Lyon is closing in on 500 – hallowed territory occupied by only seven others.

The wicket yesterday of Zak Crawley, stranded yards out as an off-break turned past his left thigh and into the gloves of Alex Carey, who completed the stumping, took Lyon to 496. He looked odds on to celebrate his milestone at a venue so often beloved of Australia, who have lost here only twice since 1934.

Of Lyon’s nine wickets in two and a bit Tests, this was the fourth stumping, and all four have been big wickets: Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali in the first innings at Edgbaston, Joe Root in the second. England have tried to collar him, and succeeded only sporadically.

At tea yesterday, his figures were one for 28 from 10 overs, compared with 7-0-55-0 from Mitchell Starc and 5-0-37-0 from Josh Hazlewood. After the break, Cameron Green’s first three overs leaked 26. Of Australia’s seamers, only captain Pat Cummins was matching Lyon’s economy.

When he limped away, England were 182 for one in just the 37th over, and had the chance to darken Australia’s mood still further. For the first time in the series, the tourists would have none of Lyon’s control from one end, allowing Cummins to keep his seamers fresh at the other.

The prospect seemed to make England giddy, and Cummins read the room. Instead of seizing the chance to make Australia’s fast bowlers work hard for their wickets – especially with the third Test at Headingley starting as soon as Thursday – they walked headlong into the kind of short-ball trap Baldrick might have set had he ever been a Test captain.

Joe Root (left) fell to Pat Cummins’ short-ball trap and gifted his wicket having made just 10

Ben Duckett was just two shy of his Lord’s century before Australia dislodged the opener

If anything was designed to cheer Lyon up, this was surely it: the sight of Ollie Pope, Duckett and Root, already caught off a no-ball, gifting their wickets by flapping at the short stuff. Harry Brook, too, was dropped on the pull by Marnus Labuschagne. It was the kind of collective brainfade that can change a series. Bazball, with its emphasis on smart decision making and well-channelled aggression, it was not.

As for Lyon, he deserves better than to exit disconsolately, stage left, if that proves his fate. He has been an Ashes fixture since 2013, and has never been anything other than probing, averaging between 23 and 34 in each of his seven series, and rarely going for runs.

As Stokes reflected on England’s two-wicket defeat at Edgbaston last week, he was generous enough to give credit to Lyon for his part – with the bat – in a breathless denouement. Funny how things work out, said Stokes: four years ago, Lyon had sampled the other side of the ledger, missing an easy run-out in the dying moments of the miracle at Headingley.

Now, here he was at Edgbaston, being hoisted aloft by Cummins after a match-winning ninth-wicket stand. Yesterday at Lord’s, his arm was round the shoulder of a medic, and Australia were crossing their fingers. Because these things can change series, too.