Nathan Lyon working on 'Australian carrom ball' with Muttiah Muralitharan

Muttiah Muralitharan advising Australia's Nathan Lyon on the art of spin.

Australian off spinner Nathan Lyon has been hitting the nets in a training camp in Colombo, Sri Lanka with Cricket Australia's new spin bowling consultant Muttiah Muralitharan, trying to devise a new delivery for Australia’s upcoming Test series against Pakistan in October.

"[The camp] ticked a lot of boxes for me, so now I'm looking forward to getting home and hopefully putting a few things into practice," Lyon told Cricket Australia’s official website. "It's just been good to talk to Murali. We all know how good a bowler Murali was, so to have his ideas and feedback about the progression of the ball that 'Davo' [national spin coach John Davison] and I have come up with, it's been very helpful."

The 26-year-old continued, "I certainly haven't landed in Colombo and suddenly started bowling a new ball. It's a big help having Murali though.”

Speculations are that the duo had been working on devising a different variation of the carrom ball instead of the doosra, which the Sri Lankan is a master of.

"It's definitely not the carrom ball [that I'm working on] - it's trying to have a different variation. So it's a ball that we've come up with working in spin week at the NCC [National Cricket Centre]. It's an Australian version of the carrom ball, I guess you could say."

"Murali's been really good to talk to about training methods and especially having different tactics on-field against the Pakistanis in the UAE [United Arab Emirates]. We don't know what we're going to get over there in the UAE ... It's going to be a good challenge for us," he added.

Muralitharan, cricket’s most successful wicket-taker, was hired as one of Australia’s coaching consultants, and has been working with Lyon in Colombo along with helping young leg-break bowler James Muirhead.

"Doosra is very difficult to teach, but we are trying something else, like carrom ball or something,'' Muralitharan told reporters. "He was bowling last year very well, so there's nothing to change much, only to give some confidence and try to teach the carrom ball. I think he will be ready to bowl a few balls in the UAE, but he will master it in the years to come.”

"I am mainly a wrist spinner, so to change the wrist position is easy, but for a finger spinner to change direction to bowl a doosra it’s harder,” he concluded.