Mitchell Starc proves he’s no one-hit wonder with the pink ball on cricket’s liveliest stage

Australian bowler Mitchell Starc sends down a delivery on the first day of the second Test against India at the Adelaide Oval. Picture: AFP

I honestly can’t believe Paul Kelly is yet to write a song about Mitchell Starc with the pink ball in his hands. It’s right there for the taking. In some ways, it writes itself. Especially for probably the most musically-talented cricket fan in Australia.

Of course, superfans The Richies have a song about Australia’s premier left-arm fast bowler. It starts with something along the lines of, “Mitchell Starc the new-ball king”.

Maybe they could bring in an alternate version of that number, replacing new-ball with pink-ball. For, there is no better exponent with the most aesthetically pleasing cricket ball in world cricket than Starc.

He creates his own lyrics with a pink Kookaburra in his hands. Like he’s done at the Adelaide Oval so many times in the past, and like he did on Friday afternoon, where he played his greatest hit to date.

Not often does the city of Adelaide come alive quite like this. It takes something special to get the people of Adelaide excited at once. For them to get raucous at once. For them to let their hair down at once.

The air of anticipation had hit fever-pitch three hours before the start of play on Friday. The members hadn’t simply gathered outside the southern gates, they’d crowded outside, with the queues going all the way up the bridge over the Torrens entering the city.

And the moment the siren went when the gates opened, they didn’t walk through the turnstiles but ran past them, and up the stairs to catch the best seats in the house.

Rarely has the Adelaide Oval filled up more quickly. And unlike most other years, there weren’t hundreds clamouring around the Village Green with glasses and flutes of bubbly in their hands. Instead, they were stood by their seat, waiting for the action to start.

A loud roar went up as soon as the Australian players walked out of their tunnel. Followed by one of the loudest renditions of the Australian national anthem you’ll hear at the Adelaide Oval.

And almost everyone stayed on their feet as Starc ran in with the shiny pink ball in his hands from the Cathedral End. Facing him was the youngster who’d told him he was coming “too slowly off the pitch” during the first Test in Perth.

Mitchell Starc celebrates with teammates after claiming his fifth Indian wicket on Friday. Photo: Getty

So, here Starc took the middle of the pitch out of the equation and instead landed the ball right at Yashasvi Jaiswal’s feet, ironically beating the young left-hander for pace and having him trapped in front with the first delivery of the Test.

There couldn’t have been a more fitting start for the setting. It had a big-match feel to it. It had a spectacle feel to it. It had a festival feel to it. Rarely has a roar sounded louder around the Adelaide Oval – and rarely has anything sounded louder in Adelaide on a Friday afternoon.

There couldn’t have been a more fitting intro for that first-ball wicket for from Mitchell Starc. The mood. The drama. The excitement. All encapsulated in that one moment as Starc stood pumping his arms and letting out a roar of his own while the rest of his teammates jumped up and down around him.

After 10 days of being criticised for not having shown the right body language on the field in Perth, this was a burst of emotion from an Australian team under the pump. A release of pent-up annoyance, even.

Starc had set the stage up with one delivery alone. He’d done so with a thunderous tempo and tone that only continued to get more exhilarating from that point on. Whether it was the flurry of boundaries from Shubman Gill soon after, the collapse triggered by who else but Starc again in the second half of the first session, the delivery to get rid of Rishabh Pant from Pat Cummins, the brazenly adventurous cameo from Nitish Kumar Reddy or the ultimate battle of two world-class superstars in Jasprit Bumrah and Marnus Labuschagne.

All while the number of people around the Adelaide Oval continued to grow with equal fervour, with records for crowd numbers continuing to be broken over and over again in the space of eight hours.

If there was enough about Starc with a pink ball for Paul Kelly to write a song on, there was more than enough in the one over Marnus Labuschagne survived from Jasprit Bumrah as soon as he walked out to bat for Baz Luhrmann to script a movie on.

It was drama. It was theatre. It was all the emotions that Test cricket so beautifully celebrates packed into one. Just like it did on an unforgettable day at the Adelaide Oval, that deserves to be remembered in lyrics and prose.