Menacing, Resilient, Evolving - What Defines Mitchell Starc Elite?

The English team's struggle against bowlers named Mitchell goes back a long time.

It began with Mitchell Johnson's ferocity in 2013-14, and has carried on through the left-arm wizardry of Starc.

In the seventh Ashes series of his career, Starc has secured 26 wickets - excelling in the unavailability of pace colleagues sometimes more highly rated.

Four more scalps in the final Test in Sydney and his series tally will be the best by any bowler in an Ashes series since Johnson over a decade ago.

From Criticism to Strength Paved the Way for Many Summers of Starc

The Summer of Starc - the veteran paceman has also outscored three of England's specialist batsmen with the bat - is the peak of a Test career established through durability, bowling prowess and a desire to adapt.

Over the past recent period he has overtaken Curtly Ambrose, Harbhajan Singh, Shaun Pollock and, most notably, Wasim Akram on the list of cricket's greatest bowlers.

By eclipsing Wasim, Starc became the highest wicket-taking left-arm pace bowler in Test history.

And when he lines up at his home ground for the Sydney Test this week, it will be the 27th straight Australia Test in a row in which he has played - a broader streak of four Tests missed from the past 56.

The time of a young Starc being told to "harden up" by then Australia coach Tim Nielsen are a distant memory.

"Back then it might have pricked him a little bit and that is probably the role to push athletes and to try and get them to be stronger than they have been in the past," Nielsen said.

"It was likely one of the talks you have with a lot of rookie quicks, especially when they start to enter international cricket.

"It happened a couple of times where he said he was a bit sore and might need a break.

"It wasn't anything more than 'I reckon it's time we have got to find out how much your body can take before it breaks rather than pulling up in case it breaks.'"

What Makes Starc So Difficult to Face?

So great the change, the national team's coach Andrew McDonald has discussed the idea of Starc, the most senior of the world-class pace trio, touring England for the next Ashes series in England, by which time he will be thirty-seven.

Ray Lindwall, who played his final Test in 1960, was the last Australian quick to wear a Test cap beyond his 37th year.

Doing so would give Starc the chance to follow James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Glenn McGrath and Courtney Walsh and become only the fifth fast bowler to take 500 wickets.

Durability can get you so far. To achieve that feat, you must be lethal too.

"Interestingly, even though he is so brilliant, is that at the start of his run-up you can discern what he is trying to do," stated former England batter Dawid Malan.

"You still have to be able to handle it but you can observe when he is holding his wobble seam, detect when he is attempting to swing the ball."

There have been times in Starc's career when he has been faulted for being expensive, something with which he has said he has come to terms.

That weakness is heavily counterbalanced by his ability to take wickets.

Of the elite bowlers to have taken more than 350 wickets in Tests, only two modern greats have done so with a more frequent wicket-taking rate than that of Starc.

He may go for runs, but the mean number of balls he needs to take a wicket is remarkably low.

"What I found tricky is I always felt like I was settled against him," Malan added.

"It seemed I was picking up the ball easily because he has such a fluid action, you can see the ball and there are good pitches in Australia but every so often he'd bowl an absolute jaffa and you would just be heading to the pavilion.

"At other times, I wouldn't say you ease up but you think 'I'm on top here.'

"He might deliver a half volley because he has experimented, bowl a slower ball and then abruptly bowls a ball that angles in and takes my off pole.

"He has just always got that match-winning delivery. If you don't treat every ball seriously every single ball he just finds a way of taking your wicket."

A Revival Built On New Tricks

Though he may not touch the 99mph heights of his second Test these days, Starc's average pace has remained consistently around 87mph throughout the latter part of his career.

An talent he held from the very start shows no sign of fading.

"He was tall, proper tall, and had exceptional pace through the air which was remarkable," Nielsen recalled.

"Additionally, he could move the ball back into the right-handed batsman."

Swinging the ball and crashing into the batsman's stumps or body was, like other great left-armers before him, Starc's primary method during the first two-thirds of his career.

But, after being dropped during the 2019 Ashes tour, Starc mastered the wobble seam ball to his skill set by the time he returned to England in 2023.

No-one in the world has taken as many as Starc's 118 wickets since the beginning of that 2023 tour. Even Indian pace ace Jasprit Bumrah trails by twelve wickets.

The wobble seam delivery has been a key reason.

"Starc just shows you can teach an old job new tricks," stated former Australia pace bowler Jason Gillespie.

"He watched a lot of England's veteran seamers and consulted with them about it.

"For an athlete aged 34 or 35 to continue improving is fantastic."

The wobble seam ball has introduced greater mystery to Starc's game.

When hurling down the ball with a wobble seam rather than looking to hoop it, some deliveries move off the seam off the surface after pitching. Others will push on straight and bring in the outside edge.

Two of England's top batsmen both were dismissed by Starc wobble balls in the opening hour of this series.

Starc's number of catches to the slip cordon has jumped by almost ten percent in the past three years.

"The crucial element to the wobble seam is to have your wrist position right behind the ball and let go of the ball off your middle finger," Gillespie explains.

"With the wobble seam Mitchell Starc will grip the ball with the seam positioned towards the off side.

"If you release it at the correct moment it will wobble its way down the pitch and that generates uncertainty for the batter.

"He has been working hard at developing that because he feels that the wobble ball going across involves the slip fielders into play and makes his in-swinging delivery to the right-handed batsman more of a surprise."

The English team's struggle by Mitchells may go on longer than you think.