🔗 Share this article

England's Mitchell problem goes back a generation.

It began with the sheer pace of Mitchell Johnson in 2013, and has carried on through the magical left-arm pace of Mitchell Starc.

In the seventh Ashes series of his career, Starc has taken 26 wickets - excelling in the unavailability of pace colleagues often more vaunted.

Just four more dismissals in the final Test in Sydney and his haul will be the most successful by any bowler in an Ashes series since Johnson over a decade ago.

The Path to Resilience Paved the Way for A Prolific Career of Starc

The Starc's dominant summer - the 35-year-old has also outscored three of England's specialist batsmen with the bat - is the peak of a Test career built on longevity, wicket-taking skill and a desire to adapt.

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

By eclipsing Wasim, Starc became the leading left-arm seamer in Test history.

And when he takes the field at his home venue for the Sydney Test this week, it will be the 27th straight Australia Test in a row in which he has been selected - a broader streak of four Tests missed from the past fifty-six.

The era of a 20-year-old Starc being told to "toughen up" by then Australia coach Tim Nielsen are a thing of the past.

"At the time it might have stung him a little bit and that is likely the role to challenge players and to try and get them to be better than they have been in the past," the former coach stated.

"This was probably one of the conversations you have with a lot of rookie quicks, especially when they start to enter international cricket.

"There were a couple of times where he said he was a bit uncomfortable and might need a spell.

"The message was simple than 'I think it's time we have got to test how much your body can take before it breaks rather than stopping in case it breaks.'"

Why Is Starc So Difficult to Face?

Such is the change, the national team's coach Andrew McDonald has raised the possibility of Starc, the most senior of the world-class pace trio, 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 year.

Doing so would give Starc the chance to follow cricket's 500-wicket club and become only the fifth seamer to take 500 wickets.

Durability can get you only part of the way. To join that club, you must be a constant danger too.

"Paradoxically, even though he is so brilliant, is that at the top of his mark you can see what he is trying to do," stated former England batter Dawid Malan.

"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 being expensive, something with which he has said he has learned to accept.

That weakness is massively outweighed by his remarkable skill to take wickets.

Of the elite bowlers to have taken more than 350 in Tests, only two modern greats have done so with a better strike rate than Starc's.

He may be expensive, but the mean number of balls he needs to take a wicket is incredibly efficient.

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

"It seemed I was seeing the ball well because he has such a smooth run-up, you can see the ball and there are excellent batting surfaces in Australia but periodically he'd bowl an unplayable delivery and you would just be dismissed.

"Between those deliveries, I wouldn't say you ease up but you think 'I have got him here.'

"He will bowl a poor ball because he has tried something different, bowl a cut ball and then abruptly bowls a ball that starts on middle and takes my off pole.

"He has just always got that match-winning delivery. If you don't treat every ball seriously each and every delivery he just manages of getting you out."

A New Peak Powered By Fresh Skills

Though he may not touch the 99mph heights of his second Test these days, Starc's average pace has remained consistently around 87 miles per hour throughout the most recent phase of his career.

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

"He was tall, proper tall, and had really good air speed which stood out," Nielsen recalled.

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

Moving the ball in the air and crashing into the batsman's stumps or body was, like other great 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 incorporated the wobble seam delivery to his skill set by the time he returned to England in 2023.

No bowler 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 12.

The wobble seam delivery has been a primary cause.

"Starc just shows you can teach an old job new tricks," stated 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 is remarkable."

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

When delivering 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 find the edge of the bat.

Zak Crawley and Joe Root both were dismissed by Starc wobble balls in the first session of the current Ashes.

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

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

"For this delivery Mitchell Starc will grip the ball with the seam angled towards gully.

"Upon release at the correct moment it will wobble its way down the pitch and that creates doubt for the batsman.

"He has working hard at developing that because he feels that wobble seam going away brings the slip fielders into play and makes his inswinger to the right-handed batsman more of a surprise."

England's torment by Mitchells may continue for some time yet.