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Veteran Australia pacer Mitchell Starc starred with the ball on the opening day of the pink-ball Test, down under at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide. The left-armer picked six wickets in the first India innings, registering his fourth five-wicket haul with the pink-ball and 15th overall.
While he started his fiery spell by bowling out India opener Yashasvi Jaiswal on a golden duck, equalling former West Indies bowler Pedro Collins with most wickets on the first ball of a Test, he also achieved a major milestone, becoming the only fourth Australian bowler to taken more than 350 wickets across all formats of the game in home conditions, joining the likes of Shane Warne and Brett Lee.
Mitchell Starc is a magician with pink-ball; feels Matthew Hayden
Along with etching several records, the left-arm pacer also received praise from all corners, one of which was former Australia cricketer Matthew Hayden. Speaking after Day 1’s play in Adelaide, Matthew Hayden heaped praise on Starc, calling him a “magician with pink-ball”.
"He has that scrambled seam delivery that goes across the right-hander, but when he does have that ability - which he did - I must admit I was a little surprised. I've never really seen the pink ball swing into the sort of 40th over and so aggressively swing as well. By that stage, he used a really important word, and it's a bit of an underrated word as well, and that's 'momentum'. It was all in favour of India," Hayden said.
"A difficult position to come back from in life and sport is those opportunities to wrestle back momentum, and Mitchell Starc did that in only the way he can - when the lights are like the way they are and with that beautiful-coloured ball in his hand. He's just a magician with the pink ball," he further added.
Hayden also spoke of the Australia’s approach with the ball, hailing Scott Boland’s efforts of sticking to the stump line despite an elongated return in Test cricket after 18 months. “I think Australia bowled in two halves, to be honest. I thought their first maybe 20 overs, they were very conservative. It was like they knew that the pink-ball was going to start to swing. And when Scott Boland came around and just started getting into the line of the stumps, that was the turnaround,” he continued.
