Pat Cummins happily took up drinks duty, donning the orange vest as England crawled in their second innings to set Australia a target of 65 – and shared a chuckle with Mitchell Srarc who had put the hone team in a commanding position at Gabba. Starc had 2 more to add to his first innings 5 including snaring Joe Root, and had also top-scored with 77 for Australia, who were well on their way to a 2-0 lead, needing 26 more post Dinner break.
While comparisons with Wasim Akram have abounded, Starc is also headed into Ashes star Mitchell Johnson category. He hasc18 wickets from two Tests, while his older namesake had 37 in thee 2014 decimation of England.
It got former England batter and coach David Bumble Lloyd saying he would rate Starc highest among Aussies. “If I’m ever asked to pick a World XI of players I’ve seen or played with and against, I always select Wasim first and go from there,” Lloyd told Athletic / NYT. “I start with him at No 8 and then move up and down. He was that good and bowling left-arm was a big part of that. But Starc is right up there with Wasim. Australia had two other great ones in Bruce Reid and Mitchell Johnson, but Starc is the best of the lot.”
Describing the left-arm anatomy of his bowling, Lloyd told NYT, “He’s a big unit, he’s got long levers, he comes from a great height, he’s got good pace and it goes both ways. You’ve got to be on your mettle as a batter to combat that.”
Why right handers have recurring nightmares of Starc was in his angle, forcing them to open up their stance or jeopardize the drive.
“As a right-hander, you’ve got to open up your stance. If you’re square on to a left-arm over bowler, you can’t see him for a start, so you have to open your stance and that forces you to do something different straight away,” Lloyd explained to NYT.
“And if Starc is bowling over the wicket, a right-hander has to be really careful on the drive. He will set you up in two ways. To nick you off on the drive or swing the ball back in and hit you on the pad. And England just haven’t been careful enough on the drive.”
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While Michael Neser immediately stepped up claiming 5 wickets, and Boland and Doggett have chipped in too, it is Starc who has helped Australia tide over the absence of Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.
Lloyd told NYT he sensed an unconscious bias against ‘lefties’.
“It’s predominantly a right-hander’s game,” he said. “Whether that’s just because left-handers are in the minority, I don’t know, but there have always seemed many more right-handers, both batters and bowlers. It must be something to do with the brain. There are many times when you get four right-arm seam bowlers in the same line-up — but you never get four left-armers. It just doesn’t happen. I’ve heard some people over the years say, ‘We can’t have two left-armers’. Well, why not?”
England have been particularly inadequate in throwing up left arm quicks, and Ryan Sidebottom was one rare one in recent times who seconded Lloyd on the leftie bias.
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He told NYT, “When I started at Yorkshire, there was myself and Paul Hutchison, and it was almost like ‘we can only play one left-armer’, and I was never really sure why. David Byas, the captain at the time, didn’t want two in the same side. He wanted more right-handers and maybe that attitude is still prevalent in a lot of teams today.”
But Yorkshire did field two left-armers – after a young Starc joined Sidebottom at Headingley in 2012. Sidebottom gushed, “Just watching him run in was beautiful. He’s such an athlete and his run-up is perfection. He was young while I was much more experienced, but I could tell straightaway how good he would be. Mitchell is so tall, with such a rhythmic action, and bowls at a good pace. He’s had longevity because he’s got such a smooth action and he’s aggressive with a brilliant yorker. He bowls aggressively in white-ball cricket and he’s so dangerous in Test cricket. A genuine wicket-taker,” he said.
“He’s such a wonderful bowler and he gave up the shorter formats to concentrate on Test cricket. He knows it’s still the pinnacle and I love that about him. He has been absolutely brilliant in these first two Tests,” he added to NYT.
Lloyd, a former commentator, also explained why lefties tended to be effective. “They are worth their weight in gold because of the different angle at which they come at you. They bring leg before wicket into play to the right-hander and, if they’ve got pace as well, they’re a real handful. You’ve then got the opportunity of an off-spinner bowling into the rough created by the left-arm seamer outside the right-hander’s off stump, which is a real bonus,” he told NYT.
