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The English team's struggle against bowlers named Mitchell goes back a long time.

This trend commenced with the sheer pace of Mitchell Johnson in 2013, and has persisted through the skillful left-arm bowling of Starc.

In the 2025-26 Ashes series, Starc has secured 26 wickets - rising to the occasion in the unavailability of pace colleagues often more vaunted.

Another four wickets in the fifth Test in Sydney and his total will be the best by anyone in an Ashes series since Johnson over a decade ago.

The Path to Resilience Paved the Way for Multiple Seasons of Starc

The peak period for Starc - the veteran paceman has also scored more runs than three of England's top order with the bat - is the peak of a Test career built on durability, bowling prowess and a keenness to adapt.

Over the past month and a half he has moved ahead of a host of bowling legends and, most notably, Wasim Akram on the all-time Test wicket-takers' list.

By surpassing Wasim, Starc became the leading left-arm pace bowler in Test history.

And when he takes the field at his home ground for the Sydney Test this week, it will be the 27th consecutive Australia Test in a row in which he has played - a broader streak of only four missed Tests from the past 56.

The era of a 20-year-old Starc being told to "toughen up" by then Australia coach Tim Nielsen are a distant memory.

"At the time it might have affected him a little bit and that is likely the role to challenge players and to try and get them to be better than they have been in the past," Nielsen said.

"It was likely one of the talks you have with a lot of rookie quicks, especially when they start to come into international cricket.

"There were a couple of times where he said he was a bit sore and might need a break.

"The message was simple than 'I reckon it's time we have got to discover how much your body can take before it breaks rather than pulling up in case it breaks.'"

What Makes Starc So Hard to Face?

So great the improvement, Australia coach Andrew McDonald has talked up the prospect of Starc, the oldest of the elite fast-bowling group, touring England for the 2027 Ashes, by which time he will be 37.

Ray Lindwall, who played his final Test in 1960, was the most recent Australian fast bowler to wear a baggy green beyond his 37th year.

Doing so would give Starc the chance to emulate cricket's 500-wicket club and become only the fifth fast bowler to take 500 Test wickets.

Longevity can get you only part of the way. To achieve that feat, you must be threatening too.

"The strange thing, even though he is exceptional, is that at the top of his mark you can discern what he is trying to do," stated former England batter Dawid Malan.

"It remains necessary to be able to counter it but you can notice when he is holding his wobble seam, detect when he is attempting to swing the ball."

There have been times in Starc's career when he has been faulted for leaking runs, something with which he has said he has made peace.

That drawback is massively outweighed by his ability to take wickets.

Of the elite bowlers to have taken more than 350 wickets in Tests, only South Africa's Dale Steyn and Pakistan's Waqar Younis have done so with a superior strike rate than Starc's.

He may leak runs, but the mean number of balls he needs to take a wicket is incredibly efficient.

"What I found tricky is I always felt like I was comfortable facing him," Malan says.

"It seemed I was seeing the ball well because he has such a smooth run-up, you can track the delivery and there are good pitches in Australia but every so often he'd bowl an absolute jaffa and you would just be heading to the pavilion.

"Between those deliveries, I wouldn't say you relax but you think 'I have got him here.'

"He will bowl a half volley because he has tried something different, bowl a cut ball and then abruptly bowls a ball that angles in and takes my off pole.

"He has just always got that wicket-taking ball. If you don't treat every ball seriously every single ball he just finds a way of getting you out."

A New Peak Founded On New Tricks

Although he no longer bowls at the 99mph heights of his second Test these days, Starc's average pace has remained solidly above 87mph throughout the later stages of his career.

An skill he held from the very start shows no sign of fading.

"His height was notable, proper tall, and had exceptional pace through the air which was remarkable," Nielsen recalled.

"He could also swing the ball back into the right-handed batsman."

Moving the ball in the air and crashing into the toes, pads or grille was, like Johnson, Wasim before him, Starc's primary method during the first two-thirds of his career.

But, after being dropped during the 2019 Ashes tour, Starc incorporated the wobble seam ball to his repertoire by the time he came back to England in 2023.

No-one in the world has taken as many as Starc's 118 Test wickets since the start of that 2023 tour. Even India superstar Jasprit Bumrah trails by twelve wickets.

The wobble seam delivery has been a primary cause.

"Starc just shows you can teach an old dog new tricks," stated former Australia pace bowler Jason Gillespie.

"He studied a lot of Stuart Broad and James Anderson and spoke to them about it.

"For an athlete aged his mid-thirties to stride and get better is fantastic."

The wobble seam ball has brought greater uncertainty to Starc's game.

When delivering the ball with a wobble seam rather than looking to swing it, some deliveries jag unpredictably off the surface after pitching. Others will hold its line and find the edge of the bat.

Zak Crawley and Joe Root both were dismissed by Starc wobble balls in the opening hour of the current Ashes.

Starc's number of catches to the slip cordon has increased by almost ten percent in the past three years.

"The key to the wobble seam ball is to have your wrist position right behind the ball and release the ball off your middle finger," Gillespie said.

"For this delivery Mitchell Starc will hold the ball with the seam positioned towards gully.

"If you release it at the correct moment it will wobble down the pitch and that creates doubt for the batter.

"He has diligently practicing at perfecting this because he feels that the wobble ball going across involves the slip fielders into play and makes his inswinger to the right-handed batsman more of a shock weapon."

The English team's struggle by bowlers named Mitchell may persist for some time yet.