AUS vs PAK | Can’t just bowl fast all the time, need to find control, asserts Mitchell Starc

For long, Starc has revelled bowling on fast and bouncy pitches in his home country, but a trip to the UK revealed just how much his game needed to develop. Although he played just one of five Tests in this year's Ashes campaign that saw Australia retain the urn, Starc used much of his time on the sidelines working on subtle changes to his bowling style and strategies.

"The bowling mentality in the UK was low economy rates and hitting that length over and over again, and it was something that I worked on and improved. But conditions are so different in the UK to Australia, there's probably not a lot of that you bring back home. I guess the big learning from the UK was that it’s not all about air speed. At times, you can call upon it, but a lot of success there is built on economy rate and a holding pattern and being really, really consistent and almost bowling 'boring'," Starc told cricket.com.au.

Since coming back on home soil, the 29-year-old has used his three Marsh Sheffield Shield matches so far this summer to put to test the skills that he picked up in the UK. But during New South Wales’ recent Sheffield Shield match at the Gabba, the left-armer returned with figures of one for 129 from 39 overs. 

Starc turned to their bowling coach Andre Adams who helped with some subtle adjustments to his bowling technique. And despite playing his next two Shield games on significantly slower surfaces at Drummoyne Oval and the Sydney Cricket Ground, Starc was both destructive and economical. Against Tasmania at Drummoyne, he claimed remarkable match figures of 10 for 60 from almost 45 overs, and last week he finished with six for 98 from 32 overs in NSW's thumping win over Western Australia in Sydney.

"That was a sign that some of that work was paying off and that I could potentially call upon that work done in the UK, when it came to slowing the rate of runs. But my mindset will change a bit, from bowling over there to being back home. You've still got that economy rate in the back of your mind, but my role is to take wickets and be aggressive," he said.

Of comparable Australian fast bowlers, only Dennis Lillee (147), Mitchell Johnson (137) and Glenn McGrath (125) have more wickets than Starc (121) from their first 27 Tests in Australia. And as he runs in on the faster, bouncier pitches for the two Tests against Pakistan and then three against New Zealand, a confident Starc is ready to unleash his all. 

“Probably in the past I'd gone to the UK trying to bowl like I would in Australia. But now that I'm home, I can get back to what's worked for me in the past," Starc added.