PAINFUL MESSAGE CRITICAL Starc hails Nielsen’s call

One wicket shy of drawing level with Dennis Lillee on the list of most Test wickets for Australia, Mitchell Starc has revealed the pointed early message he received from then-national coach Tim Nielsen more than a decade ago that calcified the left-armer’s ability to play through pain.

Barring an eleventh-hour surprise, Starc will join fellow quicks Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins in playing seven Tests inside three months for the Aussies when they line up for the start of the second Test against New Zealand beginning at Christchurch’s Hagley Oval on Friday.

Starc will enter the match on 354 Test wickets, one shy of Lillee who is behind only Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Nathan Lyon on Australia’s tally of Test scalps.

The prospect of Starc getting through all seven Tests seemed somewhat improbable when he was ruled out of a tour of South Africa last year with a groin complaint.

But despite continuing to deal with niggles – on the specifics of which he has been consistently coy – the paceman has withstood the rigours of a World Cup, home Test summer and Trans-Tasman Trophy duel.

Starc, 34, was infamously labelled soft by his long-time critic Warne in 2014, but it was even before then that his hardness was called into question.

It was during an early taste of international cricket during Starc’s brief overlap with Nielsen before the latter’s depareveryone ture from the national coaching role in 2011 that the then callow quick was bluntly told to get on with things.

“I was still learning what all those pains were and obviously the reports get around from physios to coaches and I sort of got told to harden the f*** up a little bit,” Starc said before Australian training in Christchurch on Wednesday.

“Timmy Nielsen probably made me aware that early doors. Obviously, there’s plenty of times you need to be honest with the medical staff but other times you got to know when to push through things.

“Whether he used those words or not, it was a long time ago. I was still learning how to bowl and what my body was telling me.

“I was still going through all those developing pains and whatnot, and my body adapted to things and it was like ‘your name’s always down as this is sore, that’s sore’ – there’s good pain and bad pain.

“That probably pushed me a long way to working that out a bit quicker, and not having to say when everything was sore.”

Starc said that maintaining match readiness took considerable effort behind the scenes.

“I think a lot of work goes into that, a lot of work that people don’t see or whether it be the rehab or the handling of niggles or there’s certainly sore mornings for a lot of people,” Starc said. “But I think that comes down to experiencing and knowing how to deal with certain things and finding ways through them to still make an impact with a team or perform and carry out your role.”