December 1 marks the start of Mitchell Starc’s 15th year as a Test cricketer.
Despite being in the veteran class, Starc is in career-best form with a 10-wicket haul giving Australia the Ashes series lead heading into Thursday’s second Test at the Gabba, where he started his career against New Zealand in 2011.
It’s not the only acclaim he has had in his long career.
Starc won the 2015 ODI World Cup (also finishing as Player of the Tournament), dominated the 2019 edition as the highest wicket-taker, and has been part of Australia’s T20 World Cup and World Test Championship triumphs in 2021 and 2023.
Years later, in the World Test Championship 2025 final against South Africa at Lord’s in London, Starc was the highest run-getter for the Aussies in the second innings.
He scored an unbeaten 58 runs off 136 deliveries with the help of five boundaries. He also scored a 40+ against India in the WTC 2023.
Amidst all the guts and glories, potent pace, swing, and yorker precision is a story of perseverance, sacrifice, passion, and unmatched big-match impact.
Starc is the dark knight of the Aussie team.
In 101 Tests since his debut in 2011 against New Zealand in a two-match series, Starc has picked up 412 wickets at an average of 26.64.
Of these wickets, 107 have come in 23 matches against England at an average of 25.86. He has also claimed 66 wickets in 23 Tests against India at an average of 35.84 and 57 scalps in 11 Tests against Sri Lanka at an average of 18.89.
Early years of career (2012-14)
In the debut, Starc picked up two wickets in the first innings but leaked runs at an alarming rate in both innings. He took two further wickets in the succeeding Hobart Test but lacked intensity, control, and struggled with swinging the Kookaburra ball.
His ODI debut a year earlier in 2010 was better against Sri Lanka with an impressive figure of 4-27 at the Gabba.
With a stacked bowling line-up of Mitch Johnson, Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus, Ryan Harris, and an impressive Test debut by young James Pattinson, Starc had to bide his time until 2015-16 to become a permanent fixture in Test cricket. In limited opportunities till 2014, Starc showcased all-round abilities.
Between 2012-14, Starc showed promising batting abilities with several important contributions. His highest score was 99 in the 2013 Border-Gavaskar Test series in India. In ODIs as well, Starc smashed 52* from 37 balls came against Sri Lanka in Sydney in January 2013.
He showed glimpses of his class, troubling the great Sachin Tendulkar in the BGT Test series, with a match-winning four-wicket haul against Afghanistan and a five-wicket haul against Pakistan in 2012 at the UAE.
Mitchell Starc. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Turning point of the career
The year 2015 was when his career started to lift off.
Starc became the leading wicket-taker across all formats for Australia in both domestic and international cricket, taking 60 wickets in the 2014/15 season. He was the leading wicket-taker in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 with 22 wickets.
He also bowled the fastest delivery in a Test to Ross Taylor at 160.4 km/h (99.67 mph) on 15 November 2015 and was the leading wicket-taker in international cricket in the calendar year with 87 wickets.
Starc became the then fastest bowler to take 100 ODI wickets (in 52 innings) on 21 August 2016 and remains the fastest pacer to achieve this milestone.
Starc made history in the Sri Lanka 2016 series, with his 24 wickets being the most ever by any Australian fast bowler in a three-Test series.
The left-arm spearhead was named Test Player of the Year at the 2017 Allan Border Medal ceremony.
Starc was awarded Player of the Match for his nine-wicket haul at Durban in the Australia vs South Africa Test series also remembered for the infamous sandpaper saga.
An Australian bowler is measured by the performance in Ashes, World Cup and on subcontinent pitches – Starc ticks those boxes to be among finest Australian cricket across the generation.
Variations and mindsets over the years
Whether it is conventional new ball swinging into the right handers or reversing it later from around the wicket. It combines the Wasim Akram’s late bend, Brett Lee’s pace, and Glenn McGrath’s height into one to make him the bowler Starc has become today.
His recent mastery of the “wobble seam” delivery, which relies more on purchase off the pitch than movement through the air, has taken his game to a new level.
Many international players skip the domestic tournament due to packed schedule or playing in IPL/T20 leagues for the lucrative contracts. Starc has always returned to his roots.
Starc is the second Australian fast bowler to take 400 wickets, behind Glenn McGrath (563 wickets), and among Australians, only McGrath, Nathan Lyon (562 wickets), and Shane Warne (708 wickets) lie above him in the number of Test wickets.
Mitchell Starc. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images for Cricket Australia)
Akram (25) is the only bowler with more five-wicket hauls than Starc’s 17.
With Zak Crawley’s dismissal in Perth, Starc moved to 25 wickets taken in the first over of a Test innings, narrowing the gap to England legend James Anderson, who holds the record with 29.
Starc was also the highest wicket-taker in the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup with 27 wickets – to repeat what he did in the 2015 edition makes him a superstar, or even the greatest of all time.
He was part of the squad that won the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 in India, picking up 16 wickets in the tournament.
Starc also owns the record for the quickest to reach the mark of 150 wickets (77 matches) and 200 wickets (102 matches). Starc also holds the record for being the quickest bowler to take 50 wickets (941 balls) in Cricket World Cup history.
Starc recently announced his retirement from T20Is. He played in 65 T20Is since his debut in 2012, and picked up 79 wickets at an average of 23.86, with an economy rate of 7.76. He was part of the side that won the 2021 T20 World Cup under Aaron Finch, and is the leading wicket-taker among pacers for Australia in the format.
Kolkata made a record bid of INR 24.75 crore for him in IPL 2024. He took 3-34 and 2-14 in KKR’s wins in Qualifier 1 and the final respectively, against the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
A great team player
He stood up for a young Nathan Lyon in 2012, calling legendary Shane Warne done and dusted from international cricket and Lyon the future.
Lyon didn’t disappoint, but he surely ruffled some feathers, inviting criticism from Shane Warne at different stages in his career. He also acknowledges Josh Hazlewood and Cummins as his best mates and two of the best exponents of wobble seam in the world.
Starc, Cummins, Hazlewood and Lyon are among the finest bowling combinations that have played together in Test history, having 1500+ Test wickets among them. The quartet has earned the right to be in the conversation as the greatest Test attack of all time.
Looking ahead to the away Indian Test tour, the Ashes, and an ODI World Cup in 2027, it looks like Starc has the priorities set for the future with retirement from T20 Internationals. But it might be impacted by the fact that since their forgettable campaign in the 2024 World Cup before the India series, Australia have just lost two out of 16 contests, which includes series wins over South Africa, West Indies, and Pakistan, which didn’t have Starc as a part of any of these matches.
So the message from selectors and team management was clear towards playing with a young team.
Starc has faced the challenge of dealing with injuries.
On several occasions, he has been sidelined due to ankle and foot injuries. But in a bid to prolong his career and remain committed to the international circuit, Starc has evaded the lucrative world of franchise cricket for the majority of his career, admirably during his peak years.
Mitchell Starc bowls during the ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup in 2024 in Antigua. (Photo by Jan Kruger-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
Playing his 100th Test, Starc put up a memorable performance with the ball. He ripped through the West Indies batting unit, bagging six wickets in the second innings. His figures are the best by a bowler in his 100th Test.
He took just 15 balls to complete a five-wicket haul, which is the quickest by any bowler. If anyone thought that was the best bowling by Starc, he took his bowling a level further by taking career-best figures of 7-58 in the first innings against England at Optus Stadium and a match figure of 10-113.
With the most wickets in pink-ball Tests (74 from 13 matches) and a fondness for the Gabba surface, we might witness another highlight in the second Ashes clash on Thursday.
If Starc plays in the CWC 27 in South Africa, with six more wickets in his kitty, he will be the leading wicket-taker ever in the history of the 50-over World Cup format.
It is not wrong to suggest there may not be an express quick to have a career quite like his in today’s time, where focus is on playing shorter formats with questions over the existence of Test cricket in the long run.
Neither Jasprit Bumrah has the longevity nor does Cummins, yet both are spoken of as the best bowler in the world. Kagiso Rabada’s impact has not been enough to win South Africa matches single-handedly like Starc.
Yet, Starc is not talked about as the best bowler in the world for all his accomplishments in all three formats.
For all his achievements in three format, Starc has been the dark knight of the Australian cricket.
Starc bowled during an era with bigger bats, shorter boundaries, two new balls in ODIs, packed schedules, and flatter pitches worldwide that reduced bowlers’ effectiveness.
As Kerry O’Keeffe put it “Mitch Starc is one of the most underrated cricketer Australia ever produced”.
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