The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Starc difference: ‘Softie’ toughens up
Being nice came easy to Mitchell Starc, but then a stint with Allan Donald & Craig Mcdermott unshackled his inner mongrel
IN A plush hotel in Dubai, sometime in 2014, Allan Donald called over Mitch Starc for a chat. They were in the Bangalore’s IPL team — Donald the coach, Starc the young fast bowler from Australia. Donald wanted to know whether Starc had it in him to take the next step as a fast bowler and become a leader.
“I felt he had it, but wanted to hear from him. I asked him, are you ready to become a leader?” Donald recalls now. Leadership has beenapetthemewithdonald;youwouldfind theadjectiveconstantlypoppingupinhistalks. He believes it’s what separates the ones who canmerelybowlquickandthefastmenwhogo on to become great bowlers. It’s about having controlovertheartoffastbowlingbutgoesbeyond that — “work ethic, hunger, desire to become great, ruthless, ability and keenness to set an example to other bowlers in the team, and be a mongrel of sorts on field...” Donald lists them out with feverish passion.
Starc looked up at him that day and said, “Yes, I would love to do that”.
It wasn’t going to be that easy of course and it wasn’t. A few months after that, in December 2014, Shane Warne would famously term Starc’s body language as “soft” in a Test against India in Brisbane. Starc was dropped after that game and though Warne’s remarks were interpreted as too harsh, it was something that the Australian camp was already working on. In particular, the bowling coach Craig Mcdermott, who no one would have called a softie during his career, and the head coach Darren Lehmann.
Mcdermott termed it as “presence” at the crease.“itwassomethingwehavetalkedabout even before Warnie got stuck into him,” Mcdermott had said.
Being nice came easy to Starc. There is a video of Glenn Maxwell interviewing Virat Kohliwherethetalkswervestostarc,andkohli pipes up, “He is such a wonderful human being”,andmaxwellchipsin:“yeah,heisasoftie!”
Andacutie.notoftendoyouhearstoriesof a childhood romance coming to fruition in adulthood. Starc was nine when he walked into an academy with dreams of becoming a wicketkeeper.hischiefcompetitioninthatselection camp was a blonde-haired girl Alysa, daughterofianhealy,andluckilyforhim,both were selected and trained for a while before Alysa moved away from the boy’s camp. Years latertheywouldmarryeachother,tocomplete an awww-inducing story. Someday it should play out as a movie on the Romedy channel. Even Notting Hill wasn’t this soppy.
It was one of the coaches in a U-15 camp who saw him bowl medium pace who told him to forget keeping and use his height and natural action to start bowling fast. The first thing you notice is the rhythmic run-up. Wasim Akram and Donald have salivated over it in the past, and it’s easy to see why. With some fast bowlers you tend to notice the odd things — the bobbing head, flailing arms, the lack of fluidity in the run with things falling in place only at the last instant, and a final effort near the crease which sets these oddities right. Not with Starc. Everything seems perfectly synced and the end result seems an obvious culmination of sorts.
Wasim Akram was on air commentating when he saw Starc bowl for the first time against India. Excited with what he saw, he later had a half-hour chat, leaving Starc with one advice in particular: Snap the wrist at release to get more swing.
It was to Akram that Donald himself would return to last August in Sri Lanka when he went with the Australian team as their bowling coach for the tour. By this time, Starc had already amped up as a leader. If anything, the softie had turned cold-blooded and ruthless. So much so that he had started to throw the balls back at the batsmen and Steve Smith had to pull him up publicly for his behavior. Even Mcdermott wanted his man to hold back a bit. “I have seen him go the other way now — sometimes he can go a little bit too far sometimes. You don't want to get too over aggressive because you forget what you are trying to do with the ball and what you are trying to do with the batsmen. I am pretty pleased with the way he goes about his bowling at the minute,” Mcdermott said.
Reverse swing was the theme of the Sri Lankan tour for Donald and Starc. During one of the initial chats, Donald who was talking about the angles of release and where the ball should start moving in the air to create problems realised it was better to tell Starc to observe the master instead. “I told him, if there is onebowleryouwanttowatchandlearnabout all these things, is Wasim Akram. What a bowler he was — he had everything and more.” Inspired from Akram’s videos, and close-monitoring from Donald, the ball began to do Starc’s bidding on that tour.
Everything falls in place
There was a dismissal of Kushal Mendis — Starc’s 100 th Test wicket — when everything fell in place. Just as Donald wanted, the ball started to tail in from just outside leg stump, land in line of stumps, and Mendis, past his hundred, gets squared-up. “You need to force the batsman to play at it from an awkward angle, and out of position, play it across the line,” Donald says now. “The ball began to jag away past Mendis who by this stage is alarmed that it might knock out his off stump and he stabbed at the ball. Edge and gone. “With AD, I've been working pretty much on that delivery that got Mendis out with that reversing ball,” Starc would say later.
“We worked at the release position to get him to know the angles he can work. It’s difficult thing to do but he is a very fast learner,” Donald says.
Donald believes Starc has the inner mongrel in him and has become ruthless. “If you see, he bowls a lot of bouncers now than what he did a year and half. We have talked about it in the past: ‘Get the aggro going, let the batsmen know he can’t come forward, and let the menace always be there.’
“He has everything already. There aren’t many fast bowlers who can bowl Yorkers with the new ball as he does. Unlike many, he doesn’t hesitate to bowl the new ball full most often than not. That’s when, combined with the short deliveries, you are going to get the edges and hit the stumps. He can reverse from over and round the stumps. He can hurt you with the new and the bad ball, and after Sri Lanka series, knows how to adapt himself to subcontinent conditions.”
“You can’t coach a guy to be a leader if he doesn’t want to. There are some who just bowl and go. Starc is one guy who wants it badly. He is like Mcgrath, Shane Warne and wants to be that person who loves the ball and be a man all the time. You can’t coach stuff like that. Starc has it. He is very very special. If I have to describe him in one word: Attitude. He is a properonehundredpercenter.hewouldwalk through the wall for his team.”
Of late, Starc has started to get more potent from round the stumps as well. Running in smoothly, managing not to get locked-up in hisbodyposition,stillmanagingtocamouflage the shiny side from the batsmen. “What we workedonwastogethimtoreleasefromwide of the crease. It’s still a work in progress for Starc. He is only going to get better at it.” That’s a scary thought for the batsmen worldwide — that Starc can still get better.