Starc Reality: Why Cricket Waited Decades for Another Wasim Akram

In Darwin, Mitchell Starc took two wickets and watched Bangladesh make history.

Five days later, he took the first ball in Mackay. Shadman Islam followed it. Cameron Green caught it. Starc turned around with that familiar stare and began walking back to his mark.

By his 22nd delivery, he had five wickets. Bangladesh were 12/5. Their top order had disappeared. Starc eventually returned to remove the No. 11 and finish with 6/12 from 10 overs as Bangladesh collapsed for 64.

He is 36 now. Fast bowlers are supposed to bargain with age by reducing their pace, shortening their run-up or rationing their overs. Starc continues to charge in, swing the new ball at more than 140kmph and hunt stumps with a yorker that has ended hundreds of innings across formats.

Mackay gave him his 19th Test five-wicket haul. It took his career tally to 441 wickets, carried him past Dale Steyn’s 439 and placed him among the 10 most successful bowlers in Test history.

Eleven years earlier, another white ball had swung late and crashed into Brendon McCullum’s stumps in the 2015 World Cup final. Different ball. Different format. Same warning. When Starc gets the shape right, the batter can know exactly what is coming and still lose a stump.

Cricket has seen this before. It saw it when Wasim Akram ran towards the crease.

THE EIGHT PER CENT

Research published in the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching noted that only around eight per cent of fast bowlers are left-handed. That means batters grow up facing right-arm pace. Their eyes become accustomed to one release point, one set of angles and one familiar line of attack.

Then a left-armer arrives.

The ball begins from the other side of the batter’s vision. To a right-hander, it naturally travels across the body. If it swings back, the stumps enter the argument. If it holds its line, the outside edge remains interested. The batter must protect two dismissals created by the same action.

That is the geometry.

Now add pace. Add late swing. Add a yorker. Then ask the left-armer to repeat it for more than a decade without his body breaking down or his accuracy deserting him. You begin to understand why cricket produces left-arm fast bowlers but waits decades for a Wasim Akram or a Mitchell Starc. They share the same arm. They do not bowl the same way.

Akram was an artist who could turn one delivery into several possibilities. Starc is a destroyer who reduces those possibilities to one violent question: can you stop the ball before it reaches your stumps?

THE BOY WHO APPEARED FROM NOWHERE

Akram arrived first. He was 18 when Pakistan picked him for a tour of New Zealand in 1985. He had barely played first-class cricket. In his second Test, he took 10 wickets.

Imagine seeing that for the first time. The short approach. The sudden acceleration. The left arm whipping over. The ball swinging late enough to make a batter doubt what he had already seen.

Akram could move the new ball both ways. When it grew old and scuffed, he became even more dangerous. Reverse swing allowed him to attack the stumps at pace while batters struggled to read which direction the ball would take. The statistics record 414 Test wickets at 23.62 and another 502 in ODIs. He was the first bowler to reach 500 ODI wickets. He took two Test hat-tricks and two ODI hat-tricks.

Those numbers tell you how often Akram succeeded. They cannot fully tell you what facing him felt like.

Watch the footage and notice how late the batter reacts. Feet stop moving. Bats descend at crooked angles. Stumps cartwheel. The dismissal often makes a world-class batter look as if someone has changed the rules after the ball left Wasim’s hand. He could bowl six different deliveries from an action that offered almost no advance information. He could swing the ball conventionally, reverse it, seam it, change the pace and fire the yorker. The variation came from his wrist and fingers rather than a visible change in effort.

That is why generations of left-arm fast bowlers have been compared with him. Most comparisons have lasted until the next spell.

THE WICKETKEEPER WHO STOOD UP

Starc’s route to fast bowling was less romantic.

He began as a wicketkeeper. At nine, he kept wicket for Northern Districts in Sydney. Alyssa Healy, whom he would later marry, was another wicketkeeper in the same junior system. Starc was tall, left-handed and still growing. A coach eventually suggested that all that height might be more useful 22 yards away.

Good call. The boy behind the stumps stood up, walked back and began bowling fast.

Starc made his international debut in an ODI against India in 2010 and played his first Test against New Zealand in 2011. The early years did not announce an inevitable legend. Injuries interrupted him. His control came and went. Australia sometimes preferred other fast bowlers. Critics saw the spectacular deliveries and complained about everything between them.

The complaint followed him for years: Starc could be devastating, but could he be dependable?

He answered by staying. He adjusted his wrist. He improved the delivery that moved away from right-handers. He added the wobble seam to a toolkit built around pace, inswing and the yorker. He learned to survive days when the ball refused to swing.

Cricket Australia reported that Starc took 55 Test wickets at an average of 17.32 in 2025. He has credited a clearer mind, the stability of Australia’s pace attack and his growing command of the wobble seam for the most productive phase of his career. The supposedly erratic bowler grew old enough to become the workhorse. And the workhorse retained the magic.

ARTIST AND DESTROYER

Comparing eras is dangerous. Conditions change. Bats improve. Boundaries shrink. Schedules expand. Wasim bowled without the benefit of modern workload management and built much of his legend on abrasive surfaces that demanded invention.

So, let us avoid declaring a winner. There is room for two heroes here.

Akram was the more complete craftsman. He manipulated the ball, the batter and the moment. He could spend an over creating doubt and then exploit it with a delivery that appeared to belong to another spell.

Starc works differently. He attacks time. He wants the wicket before the batter settles, before the shine disappears and before the contest finds an equilibrium. He does not always construct dismissals slowly. Sometimes he places the explosive under the innings and presses the button.

The strike rates reveal the difference. Starc takes a Test wicket roughly every 46 balls. Akram required 54.6. Trent Boult needed almost 56. Zaheer Khan required more than 60. Chaminda Vaas needed 66.

Strike rate does not settle greatness. Akram's control, range and mastery of reverse swing remain difficult to measure. It does tell us something important about Starc, though.

Among the great left-arm fast bowlers, nobody has removed Test batters as frequently. That is his violence expressed as arithmetic.

THE WORLD CUP MIRROR

If Test cricket places Akram and Starc in the same room, World Cups make the conversation even more interesting.

Akram produced one of the format’s immortal spells in the 1992 final. England were chasing 250 at Melbourne. Akram removed Allan Lamb with a ball that angled in and left him late, then bowled Chris Lewis with the next delivery. Two balls changed the final. Pakistan won its first World Cup. That sequence became part of cricket folklore because it compressed Akram’s genius into a few seconds. Angle. movement. pace. confusion. stumps.

Twenty-three years later, Starc opened the 2015 World Cup final at the same ground. His fifth delivery crashed through McCullum. The New Zealand captain had attacked almost every bowler in the tournament. Starc gave him no innings to attack. Australia won the final and Starc finished as Player of the Tournament with 22 wickets at an average of 10.18.

Then came 2019. Starc took 27 wickets, the highest tally by any bowler in a single men’s World Cup. He had led the wicket-taking chart in successive editions and later helped Australia win the 2023 World Cup, taking three wickets in the semi-final and another three in the final.

Akram owns the more famous World Cup spell. Starc owns the stronger World Cup ledger. Again, there is room for both.

THE FREAK WHO REFUSED TO FADE

Fast bowling leaves receipts.

Ankles, knees, backs, heels and shoulders eventually collect the price of every delivery. Left-arm pace can be especially demanding because the body must generate speed while controlling an action that often cuts across the crease. Starc has suffered stress fractures, ankle trouble and other injuries across his career. There were summers when his place was questioned. There were stretches when every loose over prompted another debate about whether Australia should replace him.

He kept returning. In July 2025, during his 100th Test in Jamaica, Starc took five wickets in 15 balls. It was the fastest five-for recorded in Test cricket. He completed 400 Test wickets in the same match.

A year later in Mackay, he required 22 balls. First ball: Shadman Islam gone. Tanzid Hasan followed. Najmul Hossain Shanto lasted one delivery. Mominul Haque made nine. Litton Das made zero.

Starc had taken five wickets before Bangladesh reached 13. He returned later for Shoriful Islam and completed 6/12. It was also the fourth time he had taken a wicket with the first ball of a Test and the ninth time he had struck in the opening over, moving past James Anderson’s record. This is what makes late-career Starc so fascinating. Age has improved the bowler without domesticating the threat. The wildness remains available. It simply arrives with more control.

WHEN STARC PASSED WASIM

Starc overtook Akram’s 414 Test wickets during the 2025 Ashes.

Wasim congratulated him publicly and described him as “Super Starc”. The ICC called it a passing of the baton between the two great left-arm pacers.

Starc refused to seize the crown. “Wasim’s still a far better bowler than I am,” he once reportedly said, according to ESPN.

That response matters. Starc understands what the numbers can prove and what they cannot. He has more Test wickets. He takes them faster. He has produced a World Cup record Wasim never did.

Akram still occupies a place beyond the spreadsheet. He expanded the imagination of fast bowling. He showed that a left-armer could control both sides of the bat with the new ball and then become more dangerous as the ball aged. Every left-arm quick who learned to hide the wrist, reverse the old ball or attack the base of off stump inherited something from him.

Starc inherited that world and built his own weapon inside it. He made the full ball fashionable again in an era that often coached fast bowlers to pull their length back. Younger left-armers watched the 2015 World Cup and saw what speed, swing and a yorker could do. Shaheen Shah Afridi has called Starc a role model and cited that tournament as an influence on his bowling.

That may be Starc’s greatest connection with Akram. Both changed what the next left-armer imagined was possible.

THE LONG WAIT

So, why did cricket wait so long?

First, the raw material is scarce. Only a small fraction of fast bowlers operate with the left arm. Then comes the physical requirement. The bowler must generate serious pace, survive the workload and retain the wrist position needed to move the ball late.

Then comes control. A left-arm angle can trouble batters, but angle alone does not produce 400 Test wickets. The bowler needs a delivery that enters the right-hander, another that leaves him, a method against left-handers, an old-ball plan and the nerve to attack when the match tightens.

Then comes time. Many left-arm quicks have possessed a piece of the puzzle. Johnson had terrifying pace and bounce. Boult had beautiful new-ball swing. Vaas had control and intelligence. Zaheer mastered reverse swing and the angles of the crease. Alan Davidson produced extraordinary numbers in an earlier age.

Akram and Starc assembled more of the pieces and carried them across formats, continents and generations. One made fast bowling resemble sorcery. The other made it resemble impact. Akram could make the ball appear undecided until it was too late. Starc often removes the suspense with one delivery. That is what happened in Mackay. Bangladesh had beaten Australia five days earlier. They arrived with history behind them and a series victory ahead of them.

Starc took the first ball. Twenty-two deliveries later, he had five wickets. By the time he finished, Bangladesh had 64 and Starc had 441 Test wickets.

Akram made the ball obey. Starc makes batting orders disappear. Cricket waited decades for both. It may wait decades for the next one.