Mitchell Starc - Ashes - sportstiger

Picture Credit: Twitter/@CricketAus

What a tournament Mitchell Starc has been having. While prior to the start of the series, there were several cricket experts and pundits who had their doubts over his form and whether he could deliver in the pressure Ashes series, all such doubts came to a rest as soon as Starc got a wicket in the first ball of the Ashes series. Starc has looked fit and bowled as the world has seen him bowl in his prime and showed that yet again in the Boxing Day Test of the Ashes series.

In the third Test match of the series, while the Aussies bowled out England for 185 in the first innings and Starc scalped 2 with Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon taking 3 wickets each, it was on Day 2 of the Test match where Starc came to his own when he was given the new ball in the second innings after the home team were bundled out for 267, taking an 82-run lead.

Although the match was well in the balance and could have gone either way had the English batters nullified the deficit without losing too many wickets, Starc & Co. had other ideas. Starc not only got rid of the English opener Zak Crawley and Dawid Malan off successive deliveries, he almost got the danger man Joe Root out on his hat-trick ball to reduce the England team to 7/2.

The video of Starc's burst with the new ball has been shared by Cricket Australia.

"Hat-trick balls don't get much closer than that! Mitch Starc on fire and the MCG has erupted! #Ashes," the video was captioned.

Check it out here:

To make matters worse for England, debutant Scott Boland picked two more wickets before stumps on Day 2 as England are now staring at yet another defeat, one that will crush their hopes of winning the Ashes, having already lost the opening two fixtures of the five-match series. Boland first dismissed Haseeb Hameed and then was too good for a night watchman in Jack Leach.

A video of Boland's effort was also shared on social media.