You raise good points but there is more to it:
1. Lyon outperformed Ash at a time when he was bowling at his absolute best and Ash was bowling at his absolute worst (due to injury - sports hernia). Lyon himself learnt how to bowl in Asia watching Ash videos over & over again, a fact which he has gracefully mentioned many times.
This is what Ash said after the England series (he pulled out of Ranji trophy game citing injury):
https://www.cricket.com.au/news/rav...first-test-steve-smith-virat-kohli/2017-02-18
2. Did you notice that inspite of Lyon bowling at his best and getting a laddoo like chance to prevent a series loss by winning it in bangalore...he blew it. On the contrary, Ash who was clearly struggling, came on to his own and won us the test in 2nd innings (aided by Rahul, Pujara, Rahane and Jaddu's previous performances ofcourse).
Lyon had a bit of a finger problem then so he struggled in Bangalore 2nd innings (still bowled great) but then he missed out winning the match, demoralizing India and possibly winning the series too. In 4th test, Ashwin again in 2nd innings, he did well to seal the test by taking out Handcomb and top scorer Maxwell who had hit Kuldeep out of the attack (it was a good team bowling effort in that innings when we bundled out Aussies). Kuldeep the star in first innings.
Even in his worst moment, he was impactful to win India the series. After that, he skipped IPL and worked on getting back to full fitness.
Even though India lost, Lyon was bowled MUCH MUCH better than Ash in that series and no one can take that away from him. In fact, as I said on current form, I rate Lyon and Jaddu over Ash.
2. As for Swann and Panesar outbowling Ashwin, yes it happened. Ashwin honestly sucked in that series. Got into some major technical faults with his action so much so that he was spraying the ball around. He flew his coach after the series to practice with him during domestic games where they identified his mistake and next series, he was MOS taking the most wickets.
This time England arrived and even though Ashwin was playing with injury (which hadn't deteriorated his bowling like it did against Australia) punished them. Some of us predicted this would happen and looking back, it was an easy prediction.
3. After debut, India has lost only 3 tests at home and 4 in Asia.
2 of those tests came in the ill-fated series where Ashwin's bowling went for a toss and our batting was over the hill.
1 of those tests came in recent Aus series.
Another one was in SL where he took a 10fer (Chandimal got out twice to Ash and Mishra but escaped due to lack of DRS and played a game changing innings and Herath cleaned us up).
What this shows is that when Ashwin is on top of his game, it's almost impossible for his team to lose in Asia (we lost in Galle due to 2 howlers and no DRS, a freak innings and a crazy collapse....those things are super super rare).
Every cricketer will have a bad series now and then. It happens. For Ashwin, it's super rare in Asia but it happened. It's important we look at the context and judge.
Of course, just because he has done well in Asia doesn't mean he will do well outside Asia.....time will tell how he fares. He needs to be accurate, put more revs on the ball and stay patient....and most importantly, the team shouldn't collapse for 150 in the first innings like they did in England at which point, a spinner's existence is pointless.
)
