A while ago there was an advert in England for directory enquiries that featured two runners in vests with droopy handlebar moustaches. “118, Got Your Number!” the two would holler from various mise en scene. It was big for a while, puncturing the zeitgeist before drifting away as these things tend to. After Mitchell Starc pocketed Zak Crawley for a first-over duck for the second time in the Perth Test with a sinew stretching caught and bowled the retro catchphrase sprang to mind – “695, Got Your Number!”.
Not much later, Ben Stokes nicked a Starc laser beam to Steve Smith at slip. It gave Starc his 10th wicket in the match, a feat not achieved by an Australia bowler in an Ashes Test since Shane Warne in 2005. You have to go even further back to the last time a fast bowler got double digits, Craig McDermott over the river at the Waca in 1991. Starc is making a habit of breaking records these days, and needs only three more wickets to pass Pakistan great Wasim Akram as the left-arm bowler with the most Test scalps.
Back to 2025 and Perth Stadium, Stokes also perished to Starc in the first innings, a fast in-jagger slicing through him and knocking back his poles. In total, Starc has got Stokes out 11 times in Tests, more than any other fast bowler. The left-arm quick has also splattered Stokes’ stumps five times in Tests, more than anyone else. “658, Got Your Number!”
There’s an emphatic nature to the Starc and Stokes dismissals which make them stick in the memory. Different format, sure, but the 2019 World Cup yorker that Starc scudded under Stokes’ blade at Lord’s goes a long way to epitomising their head to head. Stumps scattered to the breeze, Stokes bent double as if in supplication having dropped his bat, kicking the turf before dragging himself from the middle with the game all but lost.
Whilst Stokes isn’t quite in the territory of Starc “Bunnydom” just yet he could well be by the end of this series. Stokes averages a lowly 17.36 runs against the 35-year-old for those 11 dismissals as we head to the second and crucial Test of the series in Brisbane.
About that, it’s a pink-ball Test under lights. Guess who is a maestro with the pink ball? That’s right – Mitchell Starc. Australia might play more pink-ball Tests than any other country but the lissom limbed seamer’s record stands alone, with 81 wickets at an average of 17.08. He has more pink hued Test scalps than any other bowler.
On the evidence we’ve seen, there’s every chance Starc runs amok at the Gabba and his hold over Stokes heads into the final pages of Watership Down territory. In Australia, Starc has pocketed Stokes five times for 70 runs. Somewhere, Art Garfunkel is clearing his throat. Off stump, burning like fire.
Starc won’t discriminate though. Crawley had 155 runs for two dismissals in his head-to-head with Starc before the Perth Test, but after bagging a pair the England opener’s mind might well be headed over the ditch and last year’s three-Test series against New Zealand where the King of Clapham saw his robes turned into rags six times out of six by Matt Henry. Had there been a fourth Test, Crawley would have surely been put out of his misery.
Like an earthy brie or tired toddler, Crawley doesn’t travel well. Since his 78 in the first Test against Pakistan in Multan last October he has played 12 innings and scored 113 runs at an average of 9.4. His highest score is 29. Starc now has him well and truly in his sights, and, is it me or is that Crawley’s nose twitching?
after newsletter promotion
Michael Atherton famously fell to Glenn McGrath 19 times during the course of his Test career, as well as 17 times apiece to Curtly Ambrose and Courteney Walsh. Sometimes it just sucks to be an opening batter. “If McGrath bowled to Michael Atherton” Ricky Ponting once said, “you just knew Atherton would be absolutely shitting himself.”
With the passage of time these individual records lose their hold and dissolve into the lore of the game. And yet, Stuart Broad and David Warner, currently working for rival Australian broadcasters for this series seem keen to keep their on pitch tussles alive. You fear Warner might come off second best to Broad in the war of words as he did on the pitch (17 times, if you were wondering.)
Alec Bedser dismissed the great Australian opening batter Arthur Morris 18 times in Test cricket but refused to grasp the bunny ears and engage in slighting his opponent. In 1953, Bedser winkled Morris out in the first innings of every Test match. “Again the cry went up that Arthur was my ‘rabbit’,” wrote Bedser. “Personally I have never seen fit to minimise Arthur’s skill because I have had the fortune to get his wicket a few times… We have been the best of pals since we first met in 1946.”
Indeed at the end of that 1953 series the two men left their respective teams quaffing champagne to head off for a beer together to chat about life outside cricket. Ahead of the Perth Test, Stokes was asked if the two sides would share a beer after the series. “Probably, yeah” the England captain said. At the moment, it is Starc and Australia who are getting the jugs in.
