AXED off-spinner Nathan Lyon has hit back at claims from coach Mickey Arthur that his confidence is down and he needs work on technique.
"To be honest, I thought they came out all right in Chennai," Lyon said.
"To bowl Sachin Tendulkar through the gate you must be doing something right. I was quite happy with that. I went for a few runs here and there, but bowling against the best bats in the world in their conditions, they were obviously going to come hard at me playing one spinner in the side.
"But I've worked hard in the nets and I'm feeling confident in my own bowling. The technical stuff . . . it's all the same, I haven't changed anything from when I first started bowling for Australia since I was 16."
Lyon bowled one of the best deliveries of his life to remove Tendulkar in the first innings and rejected claims from Arthur about his confidence after taking 4-244 in the first Test.
No, I reckon it's gone up if anything, bowling to the best batsman in the world through the gate," he said. "As an off-spinner growing up, that's what you dream of -- my confidence has gone up a level rather than down."
Lyon was the only spinner played in the eight-wicket loss at Chennai and was bowling well until MS Dhoni came to the crease and scored a double hundred.
The India captain said part of the reason for his early aggression was to break the hold the spinner had on the match.
Lyon was dropped after the game as selectors opted for the left-arm orthodox spin of Xavier Doherty and brought in part-timer Glenn Maxwell.
After the spinner was axed, Arthur said: "I don't want to go into what we are working on - there are one or two technical things plus we want him to get a little bit of confidence back."
Lyon is quietly angry with the way he has been treated and a chorus of commentators chipped in to say they believe he should not have been dropped.
Lyon has 65 wickets from 20 tests. Selectors went through almost an entire team of slow bowlers since Shane Warne's retirement before settling on the former groundsman who took 5-34 (from 15 overs) on debut against Sri Lanka in 2011.
Nathan Hauritz warned Lyon against changing his technique in India, saying he had done that and it "stuffed him up".
Hauritz, the former leading spinner who claimed 63 wickets from 17 Tests at 34.98, never played for his country again after his Indian experience.
Lyon backed the performance of the other slow bowlers in the innings loss at Hyderabad - Doherty took the last three wickets to finish with match fixtures of 3-131 (46.1 overs) and Maxwell took 4-127 (26).
"I thought both Maxi on debut and Xavier bowled well and Maxi picked up four big scalps on day three," he said.
"Xavier did his role in the team, he bowled really well and pretty similar to (Ravi) Jadeja. He challenged the stumps so they bowled really well," he said.
Lyon has not given up hope of being selected again. "I have to keep putting my hand up for selection and get back in the nets. I've been fortunate enough to have a few good training sessions in the nets and I got a few things out of that. I am confident in my skill set to get the job done if I'm selected."
Lyon has a ball that goes the other way - he calls it Jeff - but did not use it Chennai.
"Jeff is here, I just didn't feel it was the right place to bring it out," he said. "If you look at the pitch in Chennai, the best part of the pitch was the middle and I was going to get more variation with my off-break, that's why Jeff didn't come out. I always work on it, so hopefully it's getting better."
The off-spinner says he bowled a delivery as good as "the Sachin ball" once before. "You are going to laugh at this, but it was the ball I bowled Chris Martin at the Gabba (2011-12)," he said. "Exactly the same thing, through the gate."

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