England vs Australia: World Cup hosts' hopes hinge on stopping Mitchell Starc

Starc took four wickets in the round-robin win vs England
Getty Images
Will Macpherson9 July 2019

In a World Cup memorable for its quality fast bowling, one quick has stood above the rest. To make Sunday’s final, England have no choice but to overcome the venomous Mitchell Starc.

The top 15 in the wicket charts after the 45 group matches were all quicks. Lockie Ferguson, Jasprit Bumrah, Jofra Archer and Mohammad Amir were all excellent and consistent for their 17.

Old Lasith Malinga had his moments and young Shaheen Shah Afridi arrived with a bang. Mustafizur Rahman ended with 10 wickets in two matches to finish with 20, second to Starc.

Starc, though, has taken 26 wickets to equal Glenn McGrath’s all-time record for a World Cup, set in 2007. He took 22 wickets when Australia won in 2015. Only five bowlers have more World Cup wickets than him ever — and this is is just his second tournament. No bowler in the top 50 World Cup wicket-takers has a better average (13.66) or strike-rate (18.3) than Starc.

The Aussie quick provided the defining moment of the 2015 final when, in the opening over, he cleaned up Kiwi captain Brendon McCullum. It summed up Starc’s distinctive, yet simple, style: aim at the stumps.

Twelve of his 26 wickets this time were bowled or lbw and only one of those (Tamim Iqbal chopping on) would not have been hitting the stumps. Starc has 49 per cent of his 171 ODI wickets bowled or lbw. Other elite quicks of our time (all of whom boast magical yorkers), such as Kagiso Rabada (22 per cent), Trent Boult (33) and Bumrah (38) are way behind.

Starc and his fellow rangy left-armer Jason Behrendorff caused England untold trouble at Lord’s.

Behrendorff did for James Vince second ball and took the spoils with his maiden five-wicket haul, but it was Starc who won the game. Joe Root got a nasty inswinging full ball, then Eoin Morgan was bounced out. The key moment was Starc bowling Ben Stokes, England’s final hope, with a searing yorker that took out the base of off-stump. It was quite possibly the ball of the tournament and Starc’s yorker is, arguably, the best ball in world cricket now.

England are bolstered by Jason Roy this time, but know they must wise up. There were a battery of left-armers, not quite of the same nastiness, at nets at Edgbaston yesterday, where a few key batsmen, notably Morgan, took part in an optional session. Root believes the Aussies can be conquered.

“I think they bowled extremely well with the new ball and those early wickets basically dictated the game,” he said. “Understanding that is going to be the main threat early on, if we can combat that threat well and get off to a good start, we’ll give ourselves a better chance of closing a game down or setting a big [target] to chase.

Cricket World Cup 2019 leading wicket takers

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“That left-arm angle is something that seems to have been very effective, in the tournament and throughout one-day cricket for a while now. They’ve exploited that nicely. It’s all about how we can handle that. We’ve also seen you can score quite freely if they don’t get it right. We need to be very clear about how we’re going to approach it.”

Starc took the slow road to bowling fast. He kept wicket as a kid, but his frame is now perfectly suited to his craft, with his long limbs propelling speared yorkers. His brother, Brandon, is an Olympic high jumper, which tallies.

It feels like no coincidence that Australia have lost the two matches in which Starc has had off-days — against India and South Africa. They are a patchy team built around the big guns of the 2015 win, but in a balanced attack of Starc, Behrendorff and Pat Cummins as first change, they offer plenty of threat. And when Starc is hot, they have a unique threat that defies conditions: a left-armer bowling fast and very full takes the pitch out of the equation.

Starc has taken at least one wicket in all 17 World Cup matches he has played. End that run and England will have a foot in the final.

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