In an article on Cricket Australia’s website today, team management appears anxious to justify selecting Mitchell Starc after a pretty indifferent performance with the ball in the World Test Championship.

Coach Andrew McDonald concedes that Starc tends to leak runs in comparison to the other Australian seamers, but claims this is acceptable because he takes lots of wickets: “His wicket-taking ability is second-to-none. We’ve got to weigh all that up when we make decisions.”

This argument seems a bit dubious to me. Second to none? Yes, he takes some wickets, but is it enough to compensate for the runs he gives away? It doesn’t look like it.

I took a look at Starc’s returns in seamer-friendly conditions since 2019 (i.e. excluding Australia’s three tours to the subcontinent [Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2022, India in 2023] where spinners took most of the wickets). This analysis takes in

• the 2019 Ashes in England,
• the 2019-20 home summer against Pakistan then New Zealand,
• the 2020 home series against India,
• the 2021-22 home Ashes series and
• the 2022-23 home summer against West Indies and South Africa.

Across these five series, Starc took an average of 2.05 wickets per innings versus 2.41 for Cummins, 2.15 for Hazlewood and 2.33 for Boland. In doing so, he conceded 3.11 runs per over, more than any other Australian bowler (even Cameron Green).

** Data includes returns for the 2019 Ashes, 2019-20 home summer, 2020 home series vs India, 2021-22 home Ashes and the 2022-23 home summer. ^Neser’s data is taken from his aggregate wicket tally in the 2022-23 Sheffield Shield and his 2023 season in England with Glamorgan.

McDonald’s assertion that Starc’s wicket-taking ability is second to none simply isn’t supported by the data. Perhaps he’s speaking of a different data set. If Starc took more wickets than the other seamers, his poor economy rate would be fine. But he doesn’t.

It seems likely England’s batters will come hard at Australia’s seamers. If Australia wants to win one or both of the first two Ashes Tests, it will need extreme accuracy from its seamers to put the England batters under pressure and force mistakes from them. Cummins, Hazlewood and Boland are likely to provide that pressure. If Starc has one of his off days and can’t control his line and length, he could give away a huge number of runs and potentially put Australia in a losing position. Personally, I would hold Starc back until at least the Third Test and allow Australia’s best seamers to do the job in the first two.