Can Mitchell Starc, the new-ball king, have one last all-timer World Cup campaign?

When it comes to examining cultural gulfs between British and Australians, much airtime goes to singing in stadiums. One group does it, one does not; perhaps it tells us a little about the Australian male reticence to try things for fear of mockery, perhaps a little about the bravado of British laddery. While all for cultural expression, it must be said there is an unwarranted level of self-congratulation for the feat of squashing a rhyming couplet about a third-tier footballer’s drink-driving charge into the approximate shape of an Elton John tune. But now and then you nod at a decent line, and a few Australians even venture into the choppy waters of verse.

A few years back this was a group of the ever-multiplying Richie Benaud impersonators, their plastic silver wigs itching in the heat. Their simple construction came during Christmas season when endless carols had by then seeped into the core of our collective bones. “Hark, the herald angels sing,” they harked. “Mitchell Starc, the new-ball king.”

He is. The rage at the moment is Pakistan’s Shaheen Shah Afridi. Tall, lithe, lean, Shaheen flows to the crease, bowls left-arm over the wicket at searing velocity, bends the ball back into right-handers. Pitched full, gleaming under lights, a new white Kookaburra ball swerves in the air before smashing into pads or stumps. His knack is doing this in the first over of a match, often first ball. Plenty of times a second wicket follows moments later.

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The thing is, that whole paragraph is also Mitchell Starc. Every word. It is what he’s always been as a cricketer, starting in 2010 when Shaheen was 10 years old. Both follow in the tradition of Wasim Akram, undisputed as the greatest left-arm quick: one of the players who brought glamour to one-day cricket, 356 matches for Pakistan, 502 wickets. Swung the ball hypnotically, opened the bowling, captained, played the format for 19 years.

There were six times in those years when Wasim took five wickets in an ODI innings. One was against very early Zimbabwe, another against Namibia. It’s hard to do with only 10 overs to bowl. Six times in 356 matches. Then Starc came along, and did it five times in his first 35. Smashed through Pakistan’s middle order in Sharjah. Did for West Indies twice in three days in Perth: 10 wickets, five ducks, one score above 14. Took six against India warming up for the 2015 World Cup, then six against New Zealand in the middle of it, absurdly almost defending 151 on one of the smallest grounds in the world, making the hosts tumble over the short Eden Park boundary nine wickets down.

That year was his peak of peaks. In six matches of the Australia’s domestic one-day comp, he took 26 wickets, 17 of them bowled. Sometimes the ball didn’t need to pitch, beating batters to hit stumps on the full. He burned through the World Cup, sacking teams like a Visigoth on an outing. Trent Boult matched his 22 wickets, but Starc’s came at an obscene average of 10.18, a dismissal every 17 balls.

The centerpiece was the single most decisive ball in a World Cup final since Wasim’s boomerang arc to Chris Lewis in 1992. Long before Brendon McCullum was blazing all guns coaching England, he did it captaining New Zealand. He opened the batting and ransacked runs: 77 off 25 balls, 50 off 24, 59 off 26. Lifting his team to the final, he started with his signature: charge the opening fast bowler, aim a flat-bat over cover. The ball was past him before he had played the shot. The crowd exploded like his stumps, but 10 seconds later all the air had gone out of the MCG. The Kiwi’s talisman was broken. Where Wasim told England there would be no late rally near the end of the night, Starc told New Zealand that the game was over after three balls.

He topped the wicket charts  at the next World Cup too, 27 this time, and maintained his standard through the slim pickings of the pandemic. There are 33 players with more ODI wickets than his 219, most from eras with more matches: the only current player is Shakib Al Hasan. None of those 33 comes close to Starc’s career strike-rate of a wicket every 25 balls. His 110 matches is the lowest tally by a mile, the next being Mitchell Johnson’s 159, yet the only players with more five-wicket bags than Starc’s nine are Muttiah Muralitharan with 10 and Waqar Younis with 13.

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Lastly, consider that Starc’s economy rate at 5.11 is higher than anyone bar Lasith Malinga. Square that with the fact that only Allan Donald, Saqlain Mushtaq and Glenn McGrath have a (marginally) better average than Starc’s 22.09. The kind of bowler who goes for plenty on a bad day, he has been far more expensive than the best in the game but has swept up enough wickets to offset that entirely. There is a strong case that Starc is the most damaging one-day bowler to ever play.

So here he is, aged 33 but still the same leanness, same lope, much the same pace, still bowling like a rubber band snapping back into place. His Test bowling is better than ever, even if one-dayers are few. It is strange that there isn’t more buzz about him. Perhaps audiences now see him as part of the furniture, just as long-term players find him less of a surprise to face. But still, he is heading to a third and probably last one-day World Cup, the stage where he has most excelled. It would slot satisfyingly into place if he could do so one more time.

This article first appeared in issue 71 of Wisden Cricket Monthly, a World Cup special.