Lee urges Starc to remain patient

If Australia’s World Cup hero Mitchell Starc is to carry his stellar white-ball form into the upcoming Ashes series he has been counselled to heed the advice of the most potent Test match bowler seen in English conditions for the past 100 years.

Starc, man of the tournament in Australia’s recent World Cup triumph, appears set to share the new ball with Mitchell Johnson in the upcoming two-Test series against the West Indies, and when Ryan Harris returns for the Ashes in July is likely to form part of a three-pronged pace attack.

However, former Australia fast bowler Brett Lee has pointed out that making a successful transition from ODI strike bowler to Test match-winner is not as simple as merely switching from a yellow playing strip to white and bowling with a different coloured ball.

Despite being Australia’s equal-highest ODI wicket-taker, Lee admits he occasionally struggled to make the transition from the all-out attack of one-day cricket to the patient, attritional Test version until he gleaned some advice from the man with whom he shares that tally of 380 ODI scalps. 

Image Id: ~/media/0635DD54454F440FA8B757F84C49A3A2

McGrath and Lee in 2000 // Getty Images

Glenn McGrath, whose Test match strike rate in the UK of a wicket every 39.87 deliveries bowled is the best of any specialist bowler to have played there in the past century (next is England’s Steve Finn with 41.56), provided Lee with a simple mantra that helped him secure the best red-ball form of his career.

“It was when Glenn (McGrath) had moved on in 2007-08, which was my best season and when I was the leader of the (Australia) attack,” Lee recalled when speaking to cricket.com.au on Tuesday about the challenges that Starc will be facing.

“I could have gone too over (the top) or put pressure upon myself, but I chose to embrace it.

“The parting words Glenn told me, and ones I’ll never forget, were to be patient.

“Test cricket is about being patient and we you feel like bowling a bouncer, run in and hit the top of off (stump).

“In a normal 24-ball spell in Test cricket, normally I’d probably bowl six or seven bouncers.

“Then all of a sudden in 2008 with my new patience and bowling line and length, I’d bowl one out of 24 which was a short ball but it counted because they weren’t expecting it.

“That was the effort ball the one that got the wicket and I ended up getting four or five 4-fors in a row just through bowling nice, tight patient lines.”

Starc was in career-best form during the World Cup capturing 22 wickets at 10.18, many of those from a combination of lethal, late-swinging yorkers and well-directed short deliveries.

But he has been unable to nail down a permanent place in Australia’s Test line-up with his 15 appearances in the Baggy Green Cap spread across more than four years with a return of 50 wickets at more than 3.5 runs per over. 

Image Id: ~/media/41E7FE0852BA4A62912F0D924A4EE4A8

Starc was crowned man of the tournament at the World Cup // Getty Images

Lee is backing the left-armer to seize his place while Harris is absent from next month’s series in the Caribbean – Harris’s wife, Cherie gave birth to a son, Carter James, yesterday – provided he is able to make the required mental and technical switches to the Test match format.

He identified the 25-year-old along with last summer’s batting sensation Steve Smith (“he’s been incredible the way he’s come of age in the last 12-18 months”) and veteran all-rounder Shane Watson (“he’s got so much to offer the Aussie cricket team”) as key players in the five-Test Ashes battle.

“If Starc gets it to swing it’s curtains for England (and) I would really like to hope that he can,” Lee said.

“People say ‘well, you’re playing the same ball – one’s white, one’s red’ but it’s not as easy, not quite as simple as just changing the colour of the ball and bowling the same.

“In Test match cricket, you have to attack as a bowler because the batsman has time.

“He can wait on you and get on through your four or five-over spell and then pick off the next guy.

“In one-day cricket, the batsman has to attack and puts the bowler under pressure but it also allows the bowler to potentially take wickets.

“Someone like Starc, who is an attacking bowler, that really helps his one-day game and it plays into his hands.

“He needs to work out how to play that attacking role as a bowler in Test cricket, and also knowing when to pull it back and bowl that right line and length, because if you’re too attacking in Test cricket it can be detrimental as well.

“Attack as much as you want in one-day cricket, but then get back to your channels of line and length still bowling those good spells but do what Glenn McGrath did day-in and day-out and just hit the top of off (stump).” 

Image Id: ~/media/45A85C48F7B84B4FAB484BA68E8F2E68

Lee claimed 40 wickets in the summer of 2007-08 // Getty Images

While Australia will enter the series that begins in Cardiff on July 8 as favourites and holders of the urn, Lee carries stark memories of his team’s 2005 campaign that began with a thumping victory in the opening Test but fell apart when McGrath injured himself on the morning of the next Test in Birmingham.

With that sudden shift in fortunes, England seized their chance and claimed an historic two-run victory that ultimately led to the Ashes changing hands for the first time in almost two decades.

“That’s what England can do on their own soil,” Lee said.

“Although I’d never back against Australia, I don’t think it’s going to be as one-sided as people probably think.

“People are expecting Australia to go over there and dominate and win every single match and I really hope they do, but I think England on home soil with the Barmy Army behind them, they’ve been playing there now a fair bit and the current Test series against New Zealand.

“They’ve got that experience of playing the last few months on home soil so that’s really going to aid them.”

As for McGrath, the dispenser of wisdom and the bowler who quite literally proved the difference between Australia retaining and losing the Ashes, he continues to sing a familiar refrain.

Asked yesterday on Radio SEN how he saw the upcoming Ashes battle panning out, he offered his now standard, sunny forecast.

“I’m happy to predict that Australia will win the upcoming Ashes five-nil against the Poms,” he said.