Threatening, durable, learning - what makes Starc elite?

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,

Starc is the leading wicket-taker in the 2025-26 Ashes series with 26 wickets at an average of 17.42

ByMatthew Henry

BBC Sport Journalist

England's Mitchell problem goes back a generation.

It began with Mitchell Johnson's ferocity in 2013, when Peggy Mitchell still ran Albert Square, and has continued through the left-arm wizardry of Mitchell Starc.

In the 2025-26 Ashes series, the seventh of his career, Starc has taken 26 wickets - stepping up in the absence of pace colleagues often more vaunted.

Four more scalps in the fifth Test in Sydney and his haul will be the best by anyone in an Ashes series since Johnson 12 years ago.

How 'toughening up' led to many summers of Starc

The Summer of Starc - the 35-year-old has also outscored three of England's top order with the bat - is the peak of a Test career built on durability, wicket-taking skill and a keenness to evolve.

Over the past six weeks he has overtaken Curtly Ambrose, Harbhajan Singh, Shaun Pollock and, most significantly, Wasim Akram on the all-time Test wicket-takers' list.

By nudging down Wasim, Starc became the most successful left-arm pace bowler in Test history.

And when he lines up at his home ground for the fifth Test this week, it will be the 27th Australia Test in a row in which he has featured - a wider run of four Tests missed from the past 56.

The days of a 20-year-old Starc being told to "harden up" by then Australia coach Tim Nielsen, with an expletive thrown in too, are a distant memory.

"At the time it might have pricked him a little bit and that is probably the role to challenge players and to try and get them to be better than they have been in the past or to be mentally or physically stronger," Nielsen tells BBC Sport.

"It was probably one of the conversations you have with a lot of young fast bowlers, especially when they start to come into international cricket.

"There were probably a couple of times, and it is not just Mitchell, he said he was a bit sore and might need a spell [of rest].

"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 stopping in case it breaks'."

What makes Starc so hard to face?

So great is the change, Australia coach Andrew McDonald has talked up the prospect of Starc, the oldest of the world-class pace trio that includes Pat Cummins and Josh Hazelwood, touring England for the 2027 Ashes, by which time he will be 37.

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

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

Durability can get you so far. To join that club, you must be threatening too.

"The strange thing, even though he is so good, is that at the top of his mark you can see what he is trying to do," says former England batter Dawid Malan, who faced Starc on England's past two Ashes tours and regularly in white-ball cricket.

"You still have to be able to play it but you can see when he is holding his wobble seam, see when he is trying to swing it."

There have been times in Starc's career when he has been criticised for leaking runs, something with which he has said he has made peace.

That negative is massively outweighed by his ability to take wickets.

Of the elite bowlers to have taken more than 350 in Tests, only South Africa's Dale Steyn and Pakistan's Waqar Younis have done so with a better strike rate than Starc's.

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

"What I found tricky is I always felt like I was in against him," Malan says.

"I felt I was seeing the ball well because he has such a nice action, you can see the ball and there are good pitches in Australia but one in every 10 balls he'd bowl an absolute jaffa and you would just be walking back.

"In between that, I wouldn't say you relax but you think 'I have got him here. I'm in'.

"He will bowl a half volley because he has searched for something, bowl a cut ball and then suddenly bowls a ball that starts on middle and takes my off pole out of the ground.

"He has just always got that wicket-taking ball. If you don't respect him every single ball he just finds a way of getting you out."

A renaissance built on new tricks

Media caption,

Khawaja takes catch at first slip to dismiss Crawley for a duck in first over

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

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

"He was tall, proper tall, and had really good air speed which stood out in my mind," Nielsen says.

"He could also swing the ball back into the right-hander."

Swinging the ball and crashing into the toes, pads or grille was, like Johnson, Wasim and so many other left-armers before him, Starc's main approach during the first two-thirds of his career.

But, after being dropped during the 2019 Ashes tour, Starc added the wobble seam delivery to his armoury by the time he returned to England in 2023.

No-one in the world has taken as many as Starc's 118 Test wickets since the start of that 2023 series. Even India superstar Jasprit Bumrah, in the prime period of his career, trails by 12.

The wobble seam has been a key reason.

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

"He watched a lot of Stuart Broad and James Anderson and spoke to them about it.

"For a player aged 34 or 35 to stride and get better to improve is fantastic."

The wobbler has added greater mystery to Starc's game.

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

Zak Crawley and Joe Root both fell to Starc wobble balls in the opening hour of this series.

Starc's number of dismissals caught in the slips has jumped by almost 10% in the past three years.

"The key to the wobble seam is to have your fingers and wrist right behind the ball and release the ball off your middle finger," Gillespie says.

"With the wobble seam Mitchell Starc will hold the ball with the seam angled towards gully.

"If you release it at the right time it will wobble down the pitch and that creates doubt for the batter.

"He has been working hard at developing that because he feels that wobble seam going across brings the keeper and slips into play and makes his inswinger to the right hander more of a surprise."

England's torment by Mitchells may go on longer than you think.