When Mitchell Starc rattled Sachin Tendulkar: The spell that marked Aussie pacer for greatness

When Mitchell Starc rattled Sachin Tendulkar (Reuters/AP Photos)

After taking six wickets in the second innings of the pink-ball Test match against the West Indies in Jamaica, Australia's Mitchell Starc is the talk of the town. The visitors bundled out the Windies for the second-lowest Test total (27), thanks to the blazing spell of the left-arm seamer. Starc finished with his career-best figures of 6/9 after claiming a fifer in just 15 balls.

Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting feels that Starc was destined for greatness from the beginning. He claimed that the pacer had always looked like a guy who would play 100 Test matches for the nation when he initially started playing international cricket.

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At the age of 19, Starc made his New South Wales first-class debut in 2009 and joined the Australian Test XI in less than two years. “He's really now stacking up an amazing career – over 400 Test match wickets. I think everyone who laid eyes on him as a youngster understood that there was every possibility that he could be a 100-Test match, 400 or 500-wicket fast bowler for Australia," Ponting said on ICC Review.

“He's got to be 6’5. He's always had pace on his side. He's always been sort of that high 140s and sometimes pushing that sort of 150 barrier. He's had the ability to swing the new ball back into the right-handers," he added.

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Ponting then recalled a spell that Starc had bowled to Sachin Tendulkar, which caused the Master Blaster a lot of problems. According to the former captain of Australia, he thought Starc was destined for greatness during this specific spell.

“I remember, he was bowling a spell to Sachin Tendulkar and was able to sort of bowl a short one, get up under Sachin's armpit and Sachin just sort of knocked one into short leg on the leg side,” Ponting recalled. “And when you could see that sort of pace and bounce and have someone like Sachin not be able to cope with it, I think that was the reassurance for all of us that there was probably something extra special there for Mitchell Starc," he added.

After Glenn McGrath, Starc is the only other Australian bowler to have played 100 Test matches for his country. At an average of 27.02, he has taken 402 wickets in the longest format. He has featured in 127 ODIs and 65 T20Is for Australia, claiming a total of 323 wickets across the two formats.