Mitchell Starc’s 100th Test will be remembered for an opening spell that bordered on the absurd. Under the Sabina Park lights – Australia’s first pink-ball Test away from home – the left-armer tore through West Indies’ top order and became only the fourth Australian to reach 400 Test wickets.
The bare facts first. Starc needed just 15 legal deliveries to collect 5 for 6, the quickest five-for from the start of a men’s Test innings. Ernie Toshack, Stuart Broad and Scott Boland previously shared the mark at 19 balls; Starc shaved off four.
Ball one swerved away, John Campbell followed it, and Josh Inglis – deputising behind the stumps for the concussed Alex Carey – did the rest. Four balls later debutant Kevlon Anderson shouldered arms to a late inswinger that would have uprooted middle; the review felt hopeful at best. Next up, Brandon King inside-edged into his stumps. West Indies were 0 for 3, a position reached only five times before in Test cricket.
The hat-trick was avoided, but not for long. Mikyle Louis hung on until the first ball of Starc’s second over; another fuller inswinger pinned him in front to bring up wicket No. 400. “It’s a milestone I never really chased,” Starc has said in the past, yet he now sits alongside Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Nathan Lyon.
Two balls later Shai Hope was late on a similar delivery and lbw ended the chaos-laden passage. Five wickets gone, barely a quarter-hour spent, thousands inside the ground still settling into their seats.
It wasn’t flawless cricket – a couple of wides slipped out, and the pink ball occasionally misbehaved – but that was part of the spectacle. Starc’s mastery of swing under lights remains Australia’s most reliable night-time weapon and, on this evidence, travels just fine.
