Starfighter
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Bowlers that lack control at times being excused as 'strike bowlers' wears thin. The best strike bowlers are very accurate, like Marshall, or indeed Cummins. Cummins actually has a slightly better strike rate than Starc. Longevity and variety aren't quality.Mitchell Starc gets criticised when he is not taking wickets, but he is a strike bowler and will be expensive at times. Being a left arm fast bowler he adds variety to our attack. He is good at taking wickets with the new ball and is not nick-named the mop for nothing,
He has now taken 342 wickets at 27.53 and only 4 bowlers have taken more wickets for Australia.
The frustration people have with Starc is that he has spells, matches and even series (like the last two India home series) performing poorly and letting the pressure off. He's clearly the worst of the big three due to this inconsistency, and leads people to consider him unreliable. There's also a perception he often gets wickets when it doesn't matter, though I doubt there's an objective way to determine this. There's been times where he's clearly gotten fatigued throughout a series, yet they don't use the excuse of 'resting him', even in a dead rubber.
I'm not a fan of chopping and changing players like England usually do. Stability is good. But some players (as with Warner and his several years of failure) seem to have a divine right to their spot. Contrary to what McDonald says, the only way you'll know replacements are worthy of their spot over incumbents is by playing them so they get test experience. When incumbents are allowed infinite chances to save their spot with a single good performance, you mightn't know whether a replacement could have done better.
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