Mitchell Starc finds his soulmate in the form of speed

In a desperate attempt to rediscover a trait of his that he cherished and treasured - swing - Starc started losing sight and drifted further away from the one attribute that made him stand out from the rest of the pack: pace. He’d lost his radar, his lines and lengths were more awry than the Mitchell Johnson that turned up at the MCG in the 2010 Ashes and more often than not, he ended up undoing all the good work that was being done by both Cummins and Hazlewood. He was no more the bowler that batsmen feared; he was the bowler that batsmen - even the ones who were low on confidence - wanted to face. Starc’s time was running out and he had a choice to make.

And in Canberra in the second Test versus the Lankans, make a choice he did, with his Test career literally hanging by a thread. The path he opted to take was pace. Starc bowled fast like there was no tomorrow, showing complete neglect to everything - that was said, spoken, written and suggested. He literally breathed fire: there was a spell in the second innings of the Lankan innings where he clocked an average speed close to 152. The approach yielded him match figures of 10/100 and that is where he managed to turn his year, and perhaps his career, around. 

Starc’s aggression from the word go - which was epitomized by his second delivery to Ross Taylor which struck the batsman bang on the shoulder - rattled the Kiwis and instantly put them on the backfoot. Despite the early loss of Hazlewood, he stayed true to his approach, not deviating from it for even a little while, continued to ask questions of the batsmen by peppering them with pace and making them uncomfortable, and reaped rewards for the same. In short, Starc tasted success the Starc way, an aspect of his game that he’d completely forgotten not too long ago. 

The numbers don’t lie, and it is unsurprising that Starc has tasted success, unimaginable success, after the flick of the switch mid-way through the Sri Lanka series, one where he decided to go back to what he knows best - bowl fast. Over the course of the last 18 months, he’d well and truly lost the ‘spearhead’ tag to his good mate Pat Cummins but slowly but steadily, Starc is clawing back the title, one you’d associate with him due to his sheer ferocity.