(Cricket news) Mitchell Starc has been playing Test cricket for the past 10 years and now is one of the senior most bowlers in the squad. The 31 year old along with Nathan Lyon made their Test debut in the same year although Lyon has played more matches than him. Starc is one of the fastest bowlers in the world who regularly clocks above 150 km/hour.

Starc is 6 feet 5 inches tall and has been often seen as the successor of Mitchell Johnson who is the only left arm bowler in the top five wicket takers from the country. Although not built like Johnson, he certainly is a lot faster than him. Only Brett Lee and Shaun Tait have bowled faster balls than him in the side but Starc is certainly the fastest bowler in the side now and in the top five in the world. Starc is one of the handful of bowlers in history to have touched the 160 km/hour mark. In the New Zealand tour of Australia 6 years ago, he was timed at 160.4 km/ hour against Ross Taylor at Perth in the second innings of the 2nd Test.

Starc’s best bowling performance was against Sri Lanka at their backyard in Galle in 2016. He picked up a five wicket haul in the first innings and in the second innings did one better by taking 6 wickets to finish the match with 11 wickets. This year, Starc has taken 6 wickets in three matches.

Starc is also a handy batter as he has scored over 1596 runs in 91 innings which included 19 not outs. He is in 10th place for batters who have the most runs in Tests without scoring a century, Starc also has 10 half centuries to his name. He missed the triple digit figure by one run against India 8 years ago at Mohali, he was caught by MS Dhoni behind the wickets as Ishant Sharma did not let him get to the century mark. This year, he has scored 80 runs in 4 innings and scored 35 runs in 98 balls in the 1st innings of the opening Test at the Ashes.

Starc has played 62 Test matches so far while picking up 258 wickets. He is currently the 9th highest wicket taker for Australia in Test matches while Lyon is the only active cricketer in the side to have more wickets than him. Lyon has 399 wickets as he has been waiting for the 400th for some time now, Starc is behind former bowler Jason Gillespie and can surpass him in the ongoing Ashes series. Another former pacer Craig McDermott is above Gillespie with 291 wickets as Starc will have the target by next year. He took the wicket of opener Rory Burns in the first ball of the ongoing Test match at Brisbane as he gave the audience a grand opening and himself a 258th wicket.

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