Despite his disappointing Test against Sri Lanka on a turning, bouncing SCG wicket, Lyon has the potential to become a world-class spinner. Michael Clarke, already an outstanding leader, has shown faith in him. Thankfully the young offie didn't start his career, as I did, under the leadership of Bill Lawry, who was a fine skipper until it came to spin. I suspect the ''Phantom'' thought spin was something to do with the drying mechanism of a washing machine. Still, he gave me 298 overs in India all those years ago and I repaid him with a few wickets.

Lyon will need to bowl extremely well on the subcontinent, for the wickets will turn and bounce and he will be expected to shoulder a heavy responsibility in building pressure and taking a lot of wickets.

Too often this summer Lyon's deliveries were too full or too short. It is a frustrating condition for any spinner to fail to get that in-between length on a dipping arc. I know exactly what is required and how to fix his dilemma. Years ago I was playing for Mount Lawley in Perth. I was a consistent offie, but rarely picked up a bag of wickets. Eventually I realised that you can't keep being that good and continue to have all that bad luck. Luckily I read of a man named Clarrie Grimmett, the great leg-spinner of the Bradman era. In 248 first-class games from 1911-1940, Grimmett took 127 bags of five wickets (or more) in an innings. Clearly I needed to speak to this man about my extraordinary run of ill-fortune.

I took a train from Perth to Adelaide and walked to his home at Firle. I found him sawing a branch from the top of an old peppercorn tree. Suddenly this 76-year-old leprechaun armed with a Jack Hobbs-autographed cricket bat sprang to the ground. Beside him was a ball in a sock hanging from the branch of the tree. He handed me the bat and said: ''There you are, son. Let's have a look at your batting?'' I baulked at the offer, but the old man was firm: ''Ah, I taught a young man to back-cut on the ship to England in 1930 … and Don Bradman was a fast learner!''

I played one ball and Grimmett said, ''Right, that's enough of your batting.'' We then ventured to the full-sized turf wicket he had in his spacious backyard. Clarrie wore no pads; in fact no protection whatsoever. Wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, he faced up to my first ball. It met the middle of his bat and he called me down the wicket: ''Give up bowling and become a batsman … I could play you blindfolded.'' That really hit home. I was hurt, but I was determined to show him I could bowl. ''Mr Grimmett, I've got a handkerchief in my pocket.'' He placed the handkerchief over his glasses. My second ball hit the middle of his bat and when he stopped laughing, he gave me the best bowling lesson of my life.

He talked about the need to achieve a dipping arc and how easy it was for a batsman if he was looking down on the ball. That is always the case when a delivery arrives at a trajectory below the level of the batsman's eye for most of its flight path. Any reasonable batsman would know almost immediately whether the ball is a half-volley or a ball slightly short of a length. My mind went back to the time as a 16-year-old I watched Richie Benaud bowl to the hard-driving Norm O'Neill at the WACA Ground nets in Perth. I was side on to the nets and I pondered why O'Neill drove the seemingly same type of Benaud deliveries very hard and blocked others. My conclusion: O'Neill was merely ''resting'' between hitting boundaries.

Now, thanks to Grimmett, I had learnt the real key to spin bowling. The secret was not where the ball landed, but how it arrived. The ball had to arrive in a sharply dipping arc so the batsman was unsure just where the ball would land.

Within a few months I was playing Test cricket, and one time in India I was bowling to the Nawab of Pataudi, who wasn't belting the hell out of the ball but he seemed in control. I was doing what I had long done before I saw Grimmett, and what Lyon has been doing for much of the time this summer: I was bowling too flat. As soon as I got the ball above eye level, Pataudi was all at sea and that self-imposed lesson brought reward in the form of a bat-pad catch to Ian Chappell some four balls later. On the slow pitches of India, Lyon will need to beat the batsmen in flight.

This season, Lyon has finally got closer to the stumps to deliver his stock ball. But there are aspects to his technique which need addressing before the demanding tour of India. Happily they are all interrelated and very easy to fix. Interestingly, Lyon's pace has not quickened from his promising season last summer. The difference now is how the ball is arriving. It is coming too flat too often to the batsman. But this slight hiccup can be averted. Lyon would do well to heed the Grimmett lesson.

Were I to have a net session with Lyon, I would show him the square spinner, which is a far better ball than the doosra and, a big plus, you don't have to throw it. Incidentally, I've never seen anyone actually ''bowl'' a doosra. The square spinner looks like an off-break, revolving slightly slower than the stock offie. Upon pitching, it reacts much the same as the leg-break bowler's out-the-front-of-the-hand ball delivery, with the ball skidding straight on. I taught Daniel Vettori and Graeme Swann that one and both bowl it extremely well.

Beer has a few niggling technical problems, but he could do a good job were Lyon to get injured. Beer is a bit like England's Ashley Giles: not a big spinner of the ball but tight, clever and extremely accurate.

Maxwell is a young man with talent to burn. Allied to his brilliant batting and fielding, he is a budding off-spinner and should go to India as the foil and back-up to Lyon and Beer.

Doherty appears more comfortable with the limited-overs form of the game but, like Lyon this summer, he has bowled a very flat trajectory.

The selectors would love to see Steve Smith's bowling come on. Smith doesn't get into a good side-on position at delivery. His front arm swings to the left far too early and, by the time he is about to bowl, his body is very front-on. He reminds me a bit of Stuart MacGill in the early 1990s. At a coaching clinic, MacGill bowled mainly top-spinners. His bowling arm was extremely high - too high for a leggie. He said his arm was high so he could ''angle the ball in before turning away''.

''There are two options here, Stuart,'' I said. ''Either get the batsman to take up his stance at backward point, for on that angle you'd manage to get your wrist in perfect order to bowl a leggie, or …'' ''Yeah, I know, get my bowling arm a little lower.''

MacGill would have soon realised that a hard-spun leg-break usually curves in towards the right-hander before landing.

A few years later, he was bowling hugely turning leg-breaks for Australia. Smith could do the same. All of these bowlers can become much better in the short term. But they need the right sort of help to become the best they can be. Our slow bowlers might not have the same depth as the fast bowlers, but maybe there are a couple of blokes who will turn their cricket around. Let's hope so.

Ashley Mallett took 28 wickets at 19 runs each in five Tests on the 1969 Australian tour of India. His ambition was to take 100 Test wickets, which he achieved in 23 matches.