🔗 Share this article

England's Mitchell problem spans a generation.

It started with the sheer pace of Mitchell Johnson in 2013, and has continued through the left-arm wizardry of Mitchell Starc.

In the seventh Ashes series of his career, Starc has claimed 26 wickets - rising to the occasion in the unavailability of pace colleagues often more vaunted.

Four more scalps in the final Test in Sydney and his total will be the best by any bowler in an Ashes series since Johnson over a decade ago.

How 'Toughening Up' Resulted In Multiple Seasons of Starc

The Starc's dominant summer - the veteran paceman has also outscored three of England's specialist batsmen with the bat - is the zenith of a Test career built on durability, bowling prowess and a desire to adapt.

Over the past month and a half he has overtaken a host of bowling legends and, most significantly, the great Wasim Akram on the all-time Test wicket-takers' list.

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

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

The time 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 affected 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," Nielsen said.

"It was probably one of the discussions you have with a lot of emerging pacemen, especially when they start to break into international cricket.

"It happened a couple of times where he said he was a bit sore and might need a 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.'"

Why Is Starc So Hard to Face?

Such is the transformation, Australia coach Andrew McDonald has talked up the idea of Starc, the oldest of the elite fast-bowling group, touring England for the next Ashes series in England, by which time he will be thirty-seven.

The legendary Ray Lindwall, who played his final Test in 1960, was the most recent Australian fast bowler to wear a baggy green beyond his 37th birthday.

Achieving this would give Starc the chance to join cricket's 500-wicket club and become only the fifth seamer to take 500 wickets.

Stamina 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 handle it but you can notice when he is bowling the wobble seam, detect when he is attempting to swing the ball."

Periodically in Starc's career when he has been faulted for conceding too many runs, something with which he has said he has learned to accept.

That weakness is heavily counterbalanced by his proven capacity to take wickets.

Of the leading wicket-takers to have taken more than 350 wickets in Tests, only two modern greats have done so with a more frequent wicket-taking rate than Starc's.

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

"The difficult aspect is I always felt like I was settled against him," Malan added.

"It seemed 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 periodically he'd bowl an perfect ball and you would just be dismissed.

"Between those deliveries, I wouldn't say you relax but you think 'I'm in control.'

"He will bowl a half volley because he has searched for something, bowl a slower ball and then abruptly bowls a ball that starts on middle and takes my off pole.

"He consistently possesses that lethal ball. If you don't treat every ball seriously each and every delivery he just manages of getting you out."

A New Peak Founded On New Tricks

Although he no longer bowls at the 99mph heights of his second Test these days, Starc's typical speed has remained consistently around 87mph throughout the latter part of his career.

An ability he held from the outset shows no indication of declining.

"He was tall, proper tall, and had exceptional pace through the air which was remarkable," Nielsen says.

"Additionally, he could move the ball back into the right-hander."

Swinging the ball and crashing into the batsman's stumps or body was, like other great left-armers before him, Starc's key strategy 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 came back to England in 2023.

No-one in the world has taken as many as Starc's 118 wickets since the start of that 2023 tour. Even Indian pace ace Jasprit Bumrah trails by 12.

The wobble seam has been a primary cause.

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

"He studied a lot of England's veteran seamers and consulted with them about it.

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

The wobbler has brought greater uncertainty 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 go on with the arm and bring in the edge of the bat.

Two of England's top batsmen both were dismissed by Starc wobble seam deliveries in the first session of the current Ashes.

Starc's number of dismissals caught in the slips has risen by almost ten percent in the past few years.

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

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

"Upon release at the right time it will wobble down the pitch and that generates uncertainty for the batsman.

"He has been diligently practicing at developing that because he feels that wobble seam going across brings the keeper and slips into play and makes his in-swinging delivery to the right hander more of a surprise."

England's torment by bowlers named Mitchell may continue for some time yet.