Sunil Gavaskar once had a comic series based on him ‘Sunny the Super Sleuth’ with memorable lines ‘They don’t call me the best stroke player for nothing’ even as he kicks a villain. Now, in Australia, the off spinner Nathan Lyon has tapped into the children’s book market with a semi-autobiographical series ‘Nice Garry’. A decade ago, David Warner had a series called ‘Kaboom Kid’ featuring as the central character a 11-year old ‘Davey Warner’.
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Two volumes of ‘Nice Garry’, incidentally the wicketkeeper’s cry to a well-spun offbreak from Lyon’, to come out now are ‘Bowled over’ and ‘In a Spin’.
It’s about a 10-year old Garry who lives in fictional rural region called ‘Youngtown’. Lyon had grown up at Young, 400 km west of Sydney.
“I sat down with Michael Wagner and basically described my childhood, so the storylines are pretty similar to what it was like for me growing up in the country.
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“Stuff like not having everything at your fingertips, and understanding that you’re going to come across a few different challenges in life,” Lyon told Cricket.com.au.
“It’s also about learning from those failures and experiences, and being able to carry on. And if you’re part of a small country community, you can quickly learn that everyone has a talent so it’s just about unearthing whatever that talent is and getting the most out of it.”
Lyon’s first venture into publishing comes for his daughters Harper (9) and Milla (8)
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“With Harper and Milla growing up, and being at the age where they’re quite influenced by social media or the power of their iPads, TikTok and all of that stuff, I thought it was a good opportunity to put across a couple of really important messages,” Lyon said. “There’s a couple of really nice messages in there about sibling rivalry, and how it’s okay to fail but also understanding what that looks like. And to understand success and how to cope with it as well.”
