Despite being picked by the Kolkata Knight Riders at the 2018 IPL auction, Mitchell Starc did not play a single match that season.

Mitchell Starc is yet to play at the IPL since he appeared for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 2014 and 2015 editions, when he claimed 34 wickets in 27 matches while going at 7.17 an over.

However, he had registered himself for the 2018 edition as well. He had set himself a base price of INR 2 crore that season and, after frantic bidding, the Kolkata Knight Riders had acquired him for INR 9.4 crore (US$ 1.8 million). That made him the sixth-most expensive cricketer at the 2018 IPL auction.

Australia toured South Africa in the summer of 2017/18, where he picked up an injury during the ill-fated Newlands Test match (usually remembered for the ball-tampering scandal). A fracture of the right tibial bone was diagnosed, and Starc was ruled out of the rest of the series as well as IPL.

Starc had already availed a policy with Lloyd’s of London, who offered coverage for “unique circumstances that traditional insurers don’t insure against”. He now demanded a claim, and subsequently filed a lawsuit.

His lawyers argued that he had had to bowl on “uneven footmarks on a worn pitch”. As a result, he “suffered an injury to his right tibial bone, revealed by a sudden onset of pain in his right calf, which worsened over the next few bowling sessions and during the next Test match”.

The insurers demanded Starc proved that he had suffered “a single, sudden and unexpected event, which occurred at an identifiable time and place”.

Two days ahead of the scheduled date of hearing, he won an “in-principle insurance settlement” worth US$ 1.53 million – 85 per cent of what Kolkata would have paid him.

At the 2024 edition, Kolkata acquired Starc again, this time for INR 24.75 crore – the highest fee in IPL history.