Ashes 2021/22: How Mitchell Starc rates among Australia’s greatest Test bowlers

It’s hard to argue against Mitchell Starc being one of Aussie Test cricket’s biggest success stories of the last 10 years. His stats are exemplary. But is he as good as Lillee, McGrath and Cummins?

Mitchell Starc has been playing Tests for a decade, but the cricket world is still struggling to put a definitive label on him.

Does he belong with the greats, the very goods, the mostly hot but occasionally colds, or does he deserve his own category as someone who can be all of the above as one of the game’s enigmas?

Rating Starc is a tricky business because it’s not as if he’s like Josh Hazlewood who, if he was a share, would be that steadily growing blue chip. Starc, by contrast, can be that speculator that bottoms out for a month before roaring to life, like he has in this exceptional summer.

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Mitchell Starc’s best balls are as dangerous as any bowler. Picture: Chris Hyde/Getty Images

The home SCG Test is an important one for Starc because it has been one of his toughest venues and, if he can slam dunk England on a flat deck in Sydney, it will frank his work on livelier decks earlier in the series.

It’s been said you cannot assess Starc’s worth by statistics, but you actually can because there are patterns in the numbers which tell us what he is all about.

Such as …

Strike rate

This is Starc’s killer stat. His 269 Test wickets from 64 matches come at the exceptional rate of 48.9 balls each and only the remarkable Cummins has struck more frequently at Test level of all frontline Australian Test bowlers in history. This means one thing – his best balls are as dangerous as anyone’s and it’s a big plus.

Economy rate

Of Australia’s top 20 Test wicket-takers, only Brett Lee went for more runs per over, which means that while his best balls were peaches, he could also pay for it when his radar scrambled.

Starc beats England captain Joe Root at the MCG. Picture: Hamish Blair/AFP-

Average

His wickets come at the very honourable average of 27.15, which, as much as any number he is associated with, defines where he sits in the pecking order over the past 50 years. No, he is not in the Freak of Nature category with Dennis Lillee, Glenn McGrath or Cummins, who all averaged less than 25 per wicket.

But he sits very comfortably in the next level down with Mitchell Johnson, Craig McDermott and Jason Gillespie. Starc’s best work was as good as the greats – but they just did it more often.

The allrounder

The ICC moved him above Ben Stokes on the all-rounders rankings in Tests and, while he’s not a mountain mover like Stokes, it has spotlighted the fact that batting is an underestimated part of his game. A Test batting average of 23 is not far short of what most teams expect from their wicketkeepers at No 7.

Starc averages 23 with the bat at Test level. Picture: Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

But is Starc on the same level as Mitchell Johnson? Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

The bottom line

Much like Johnson, because he is a left-armer who bowls from one side of the wicket and directs the ball to the other, he is always likely to spray it more than a right-armed metronome, like McGrath, who ploughs the same channel from the same side of the wicket.

That variety and sense of the unexpected is what makes Starc potentially great, and vulnerable at the same time, but the bottom line is that he has been a major success story.

Starc, at 32, may have two or three years left at the top and should pass 300 wickets, making him, with a tidy batting average and an acknowledged star of the white ball games, one of Australia’s most valuable players of his generation.

Originally published as Ashes 2021/22: How Mitchell Starc rates among Australia’s greatest Test bowlers