Lockdown a Starc contrast
Mitch Starc hasn’t picked up a cricket bat or ball in two months, and isn’t exactly salivating at the prospect of his new work conditions.
The enforced lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic gave the Australian pace bowler and his wife Alyssa Healy, who is the wicketkeeper for the Australian women’s team, a reprieve from their constant and sometimes conflicting careers in international cricket.
Starc returned to pre-season practice yesterday in Sydney, still unclear as to when the Australian team will tour again. One thing is for sure, he won’t be adding extra commitments to what likely will be a heavy schedule when cricket resumes.
Starc had already opted out of the Indian Premier League this season, and is unlikely to re-consider, even if the lucrative competition is rescheduled to later in 2020.
“It’s hard enough juggling one cricket schedule with three formats, let alone when my wife plays cricket on a completely different schedule as well. Something I take into consideration heavily is being able to spend time together,” he told a video news conference. “For us to have that time together, which we have done the last eight weeks, I wouldn’t give that back for a contract at all.”
After a “lazy couple of weeks” Starc and Healy put together a home gym to use for training and played a lot of golf together.
“Selfishly, it’s been really nice to have a period of time where you can have a home routine and feel pretty normal, in a way,” Starc said. “There’s bigger and more important things happening around the world. But it’s been really nice to have eight or nice weeks at home doing the little things — a bit of house work, cooking together, having that normality in your life that doesn’t come with international cricket schedules.”
It’s time for Starc to start thinking harder about how he’s going to take wickets under proposed new playing conditions that will prohibit the use of saliva to shine the ball. It has long been customary in cricket for players to use spit or sweat to keep one side of the leather ball shiny so that it swings through the air.
Starc said lawmakers should consider instructing curators to leave extra grass on the wickets or allowing the use of an artificial substance to shine the ball in the specific Covid-19 “window of time”. —AP