Australia’s pace superstar Mitchell Starc had a milestone 100th Test match that not a lot of fast bowlers can dream of. Starc perfected it with his career-best figures as his otherworldly 6/9 tormented West Indies and reduced them to the second-lowest score (27 all out) in Test history in Jamaica.
Sixteen years on since making his First-Class debut for New South Wales, Starc has stamped his legacy among the greats of fast bowling and former Australia captain Ricky Ponting who has seen the left-armer through his early days believes he has gotten “better and better” with age.
The 35-year-old Starc took home a heap of records as he became the second-fastest man to reach 400 Test wickets and even extended his record with the new ball with 23 scalps in the first over, the most since his Test debut. “Skill-wise and mentally, I think he understands his body, understands his game probably better than ever, especially the last couple of years,” Ponting noted in the ICC Review podcast.
“He’s added a couple of different skills maybe the last two or three years that don’t seem like massive things, but he’s sort of incorporated that three-quarters seam, that wobble seam delivery that’s just made his in-swing of that little bit more potent as well and has given him a little bit more variation.”
Ponting recalled how it was a fiery 2012 spell at WACA, Perth to his long-time contemporary and India batting great Sachin Tendulkar that destined Starc for greatness in his eyes.
‘The short ball barrage to Tendulkar’
In the second innings of the WACA Test in 2012, Ponting recounted how Starc, playing only his third Test and a first against India, had constricted Tendulkar by targeting his shoulder.
“I remember, he was bowling a spell to Sachin Tendulkar and was able to sort of bowl a short one, get up under Sachin’s armpit and Sachin just sort of knocked one into short leg on the leg side.
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“And when you could see that sort of pace and bounce and have someone like Sachin not be able to cope with it, I think that was the reassurance for all of us that there was probably something extra special there for Mitchell Starc,” said Ponting.
Starc ended up trapping Tendulkar lbw on 8 as Australia rolled over India by an innings and 37 runs. Starc’s menacing form was full on display in the Caribbean as he registered the fastest Test five-wicket haul by a bowler in history, bettering a joint record held by Ernie Toshack (v India, 1947), Stuart Broad (v Australia, 2015) and Scott Boland (v England, 2021) in 19 deliveries.
