Mitchell Starc reigns as pink-ball king for Australia in second Test with India | cricket

Outside sporting songs are usually boring, partly because they are usually sung melodically by annoying drunks, and partly because they usually consist of a shoddy rhyme wedged into the barely noticed melodic line of a middle note without regard to cadence or meter. Animal radio hit. The few who are a little more artful stand out and appear far better through their company than they objectively deserve. One from recent years that occasionally brings joy is: “Hark, the herald angels sing – Mitchell Starc, the new ball king.”

The wording is appropriate, the use of a Christmas hymn is seasonally appropriate for Australia in December or January and the sentiment reflects a hard truth. Starc with a painted kookaburra (although that sounds like a strange object to own without context) is a threat. But if you replace the text of “new-ball” with “pink-ball,” it would be even more appropriate. In the day-night test format, no one did it better.

As the second Test against India began at the Adelaide Oval on Friday, Australia’s 13th day-nighter began. Starc played 13 of them. When the first innings ended after the second session, he had 72 wickets in the format at 17.81 runs apiece, a supernatural performance complemented by his final haul of six for 48.

Nathan Lyon is the only other cricketer to have played all 13 and although he limited himself to just one here, he bowled more overs in total than Starc. His wicket tally is barely half that, currently standing at 43. The same goes for Josh Hazlewood with 37, while Pat Cummins has exactly half that with 36.

These are the best four in the world, and that’s partly because of the odds: of the non-Australians in day-night Tests, a few Englishmen have played six or seven, while India’s Ravichandran Ashwin and West Indies player Kraigg Braithwate have five . But in his 13 games, Starc has taken his wickets at a strike rate of 34.6 – less than six overs per dismissal. Those with better numbers in this column have largely bowled very little, with Ashwin bowling by far the most with 88 overs. Starc held his record for 416 overs and 10 years.

He bowled as that first day record suggests. As he arrived at the batting line, the new ball flashing brightly on the TV screens like a rave toy in his hand, he rolled one to Yashasvi Jaiswal, who did everything a swing bowling novice could wish for. Starting from the left-hander’s leg stump, it came back far enough to hit the bat and shatter the pad in front of middle and leg. Fingers up and a tip to Jaiswal: that wasn’t his slower ball.

It was the third time in his career that Starc hit the first ball of a game, having knocked out Rory Burns’ leg stump in the 2021 Brisbane Ashes Test and Dimuth Karunaratne’s clip to midwicket in Galle in 2016. Pedro Collins is the only other bowler to achieve this three times.

Then, strangely, that start seemed to be the end of Australia’s luck, as Shubman Gill and KL Rahul were very lucky, surviving drop catches and no-ball wickets while pulling away for runs from Starc through tricky and tricky shots. They built their partnership past 60 when Australia started to look flat. But Starc’s return before half-time got things back on track. His extra bounce resulted in two strange dismissals, with Rahul and then Virat Kohli unable to keep the bat away from the ball when trying to leave the ball, deflecting catches from their back lift towards the barrier.

In the second session, after Scott Boland and Cummins added wickets thanks to the opening created by Starc, he returned to take a wicket in the opening over of his turn for the third time that day. Ashwin’s lbw was beyond doubt and sparked one of the worst reviews imaginable as it was actually confirmed that the full ball that shot into his ankle hit the base of middle stump.

Harshit Rana’s shot was as comically ambitious as Ashwin’s criticism: a square drive off the back foot, with the bat about nine inches wide of the line of the near-yorker, who smashed his stumps without fear in his path to be interrupted. And while no Indian innings on this tour is complete without Nitish Kumar Reddy missing a few things at the end, the only sumptuous six he launched from Starc soon came into play, via a ski drive, which was captured mid-off.

In Perth, Starc struggled for penetration after failing in both opening games on the first day. He completed the job in Adelaide. India wanted to score 180 at the start of the second Test, similar to 150 in the first. However, unlike Perth, the Australian batters provided the other necessary part of the equation by reaching stumps one wicket further down with 86 on the pitch.

Jasprit Bumrah again threw some sensational shots, dismissing Usman Khawaja and dropping Nathan McSweeney, but also struggled at times with the pink ball swinging down the leg side for extras. He hunted, but his main prey, Marnus Labuschagne, made it back to the den. Bumrah is one of those rare customers with a day-night strike approaching Starc’s, but he is playing only his fourth such match and has bowled 64 overs with a pink ball so far after a couple of very short stints in India. On the evidence of that first day, Mitchell Starc remains the king before night falls.