If Australia were going to play Mitchell Starc in this series, it was going to be at Old Trafford. The key bowler of their World Cup, topping the tournament with 27 wickets, had been on the bench for three Tests. He had been gracious about a squad approach, but was running short of time to play. Manchester was supposed to be England’s fastest track, and Starc had just caused a clatter of wickets in a tour match at Derby.
On its face, his selection added up. In practice on the Test’s third day, it didn’t. It may yet come good, because Starc has the capacity to gobble up a batsmen like a Roald Dahl giant with a handful of human beans. But he can equally feed the batsmen instead.
Starc has a few regular errors. As a left-armer he bowls too wide across right-handers so the ball can be easily left. He also moves that line too far and bowls down the leg side. His bouncer is often so short that it sails over its target. When his radar calibrates between these extremes, his danger manifests: shaping the ball laterally or getting it to jump at the body. But through his couple of overs on the second evening and his first few on the third morning, the batsmen rarely had to play. By his fifth, they started taking him down.
Rory Burns is the most uncomfortable figure at the crease, a batsman who takes guard looking like a broken Slinky. Somehow his dangling mess of left-handed limbs reaches for the ball, incapable of resisting anything outside off stump. But with Starc consistently giving width, Burns was able to follow it with an open bat, steering and driving with increasing control.
A couple of boundaries in Starc’s second spell set the expectation. Two more started his third spell. Joe Root got involved, pulling him for four, while the twos and threes mounted. Starc went for 22 in two overs, Australia went for 31 in four. As the partnership continued, the mood of the game had completely changed from 25 for two. The hundred came up, the crowd found voice, and Burns looked settled.
None of this was especially surprising. Starc may have taken seven wickets in that tour match but six were tailenders in effectively the second XI of a team anchoring the county system’s second division. He bowled at stumps and hit them against players who didn’t have much say in the matter.
His tour match at Worcester was indifferent, with Starc clattered through the covers repeatedly by 18-year-old Jack Haynes on debut. He was the least impressive in Australia’s intra-squad match before the series, which probably played a part in him missing the first Test. He has played brilliant Tests before but wasn’t suggesting a recurrence was imminent.
White-ball geniuses can flatter to deceive. Alex Carey has been talked up since an excellent World Cup but has a first-class record firmly ranked among the modest. Jason Roy bossed that tournament as an opener but is on borrowed time in Tests. Neither Jonny Bairstow nor Jos Buttler this August or September has had a fraction of the dash and assurance that marked June and July. Only Ben Stokes has been able to translate his work from one format to the next.
Starc is the best white-ball bowler in the world. He can be unstoppable in a format where batsmen have to attack him and where the approach for his 10 overs is known ahead of time. One-day bowling is a sonnet, Test matches are a verse novel. The tyranny of the white page applies to the white clothes.
Starc didn’t bowl again after his 11 overs for 41. All through the final session he prowled the boundary. Pat Cummins bowled 10 overs either side of tea, applying the brakes, beating the bat consistently, softening up Burns with the short ball and having Root missed in the cordon. Then Josh Hazlewood came on for a brilliant spell, cutting the ball off the seam three times to take an edge from Burns, pin Root in front, then knock out Roy’s middle stump. It took the discipline and accuracy of those bowlers to give Australia their first five wickets.
Of course Starc could return on day four to run through those that are left. He is always a chance to make an impact. After his expensive overs, when he found some accuracy for a patch, he cut a ball inwards and hit Root in the groin so hard that it smashed Root’s box in half. While the England captain took a few minutes for composure and careful attention, Starc waited at his mark wrapped in a towel against the cold wind, not wanting to put his jumper on and take it off again. In a way it summed him up: waiting to bowl, always a danger, always fragile.
