Lucky Starc

GH on the everywhere man

Australian cricketers have a liking for landmark Tests in landmark locations. It’s therefore kind of fitting that Mitchell Starc should be playing his hundredth Test somewhere Australia hardly ever plays, although, of course, he has. He has 395 Test wickets on thirty-eight grounds. Pat Cummins called him a ‘warrior’ who ‘never misses a day for Australia’; I think of him more as cricket’s Lucky Starr.*

Starc’s signature is the instant irruption - his twenty victims in the first over of Test matches, the three from the first ball. His legacy, however, will be that of the marathon man. A lot of bowlers can give you a great first spell, then a second. But can you come back, and back, and back? Starc does, and willingly. He’ll peer at the ball, kick proprietorially at the crease, pre-emptively wipe away the sweat, and immediately test the speedo: Starc’s capacity to crank it to more than 140kmh, no matter the hour, no matter the scenario, reminds you of watching Eluid Kipchoge surge down a street or Hicham El Guerrouj take a bend. How do they find that gear? Where does it come from? Sometimes we dicker over definitions - fast-medium or medium fast? In Starc’s case, Cricinfo says unambiguously ‘left-arm-fast’. Nobody in the history of cricket, I fancy, has bowled so fast at the age of 35.