Follow Us“He has to change his body language, it needs to be stronger — he looks a bit soft. He needs to puff his chest out a bit, look harder.”
Imagine you are taking your first few steps in a new job, and this is what the star employee, who’s loved by everyone for his charisma and magical work, says about you!
Mitchell Starc would have been shattered from inside. After all, it was coming from Shane Warne. However, it was said way back in 2014. Back when Starc was young, raw, but still moved the ball at a rapid pace.
Today, more than a decade later, Starc is still moving the ball at the same express pace and making it do more things than it did back when Warne called him soft. He has 99 Test matches under his belt and is about to be the quickest fast bowler to reach 400 Test wickets in terms of balls bowled.
No one even dares to call him ‘soft’ now, because anyone who has an iota of understanding of what it takes to be a fast bowler to play 100 Test matches will recognise the gargantuan nature of this achievement. In fact, no Australian pacer apart from the ‘GOAT’ Glenn McGrath has had a century of Test caps to his name. Not even the great Dennis Lillee, whose name is taken as a legend of the game, not just as an Australian great.
If someone has played 100 Test matches, not only is it a testament to their fitness and longevity, but also to their constant evolution as a cricketer, where they remained relevant for a long period of time despite the game changing at the rate of knots every time you pay attention to it.
The fact that someone like Starc has reached this milestone, who for the majority of his first few years in Test cricket was thought of as a new ball or a reverse swing bowler, tells us that he has evolved massively over his career.
From being an innocuous middle overs operator to having the ability to consistently employ the wobble ball as one of its best operators, Starc has upskilled himself at almost every stage of his career. In fact, you see it even more since 2021, that he is no more just reliant on the full swinging deliveries to get his wickets — rather, he’s edging out batters by bowling good length deliveries that deviate off the seam like serpents at 145kmph.
Add to all of this the fact that he’s the best left-arm pacer after Wasim Akram that the sport has ever seen, and then you can completely see just how great a Test bowler Starc has been. From being the bowler to pick the most wickets in the first overs of Test cricket, to being the best pink ball bowler, Starc has created his own unique legacy in Test cricket already, and he’s nowhere near done yet.
In fact, since 2023, this fast swinging menace has had 91 Test wickets at a strike rate of just 42.5, showing that even when he’s around his mid-30s, when fast bowlers begin the end of their Test journeys, he’s still going strong as one of the best pacers going around.
Even his wife, Australia women’s skipper Alyssa Healy, finds it hard to believe that the guy she started wicketkeeping with as a young teenager, who shifted to pace bowling only at 14, could be one of the best Australian Test bowlers at 35. It’s a testament to Starc’s fitness that he’s still bowling as quickly as ever.
Express pacers just don’t last this long in Test cricket. They taper off after injuries. Look at Lilee’s career, and how it came to an end after 70 Tests. Remember how Waqar Younis was never the same bowler after his back injuries. Shoaib Akhtar could never play more than 46 Test matches. And then there is Starc, who still consistently notches it above the 140-145kmph mark and will play his 100th Test match in less than 12 hours from now.
All of this has come at a cost of prioritising Tests over franchise leagues, which Starc admitted in an interview with ESPNCricinfo.
“Test cricket was probably the hardest format to either feel like I was good enough for or felt like I was capable of doing. To get that opportunity, I wasn't going to let that pass at all. The years that I did miss franchise cricket, I don't regret that at all. To get my body in as good a spot as I could for Australia to play 99 games, spend some time at home, spend some time with Alyssa [Healy] and family. That's the reason why I did those things,” Starc said.
Despite all this, Starc’s Test greatness almost sneaks up on you. It’s not shoved in your face by your cricket-addled brain. And yet, when you look at pace bowlers who have played 99 Test matches, you’ll find that he has taken wickets at a quicker rate (strike rate of 48) than Glenn McGrath and Wasim Akram.
He’s not only an Australian Test great. He’s a bona fide all-time Test great. His 100th Test match is coincidentally a Pink-ball Test, which feels like an ode to the best day-night Test bowler there is.
Celebrate him, because in this age of three formats and more franchise leagues than fingers and toes on a human, it's a rare occasion to see an express pacer play his 100th Test match. Celebrate him, because Mitchell Starc is like that rare comet that paints the night sky in its glorious pink hue just once, and will probably never appear again in Test cricket history.