Not often do you see one ball become the talk of the town when an Australian captain had hit a double century and another man, making a comeback to the Test side had registered his highest Test score of 181. But Day 4 at WACA was different, not because both Steve Smith and Mitchell Marsh were dismissed in the first half an hour of the day but Mitchell Starc had come up with something that surpassed everything late in the evening.
England were in a desperate search of a partnership, having lost three top order batsmen cheaply and still trailing Australia by almost 200 runs when Starc sucked the life out of the visitors batting-line up with what is being hailed as the ‘Ball of Ashes’.
So what was so special about that Starc Ball? Pretty much everything. It straightened after pitching from an impossible angle to knock the off stump down of a batsman batting on 55 without much fuss.
At 145 km/h the ball pitched around middle and straightened to hit the top of James Vice’s off stump. The delivery swung an impeccable 42 cms or 3.8 degrees.
Such was the quality of the delivery that it got the greats talking. Wasim Akram said it took him back to his playing days while Mitchell Johnson said it was an absolute seed!
Former England captain Kevin Pietersen went a step further by calling the Starc delivery “The Ball of the Ashes”.
Trailing by 259 runs in the first innings after Australia declared at 662 for nine, England were 132 for four when stumps was called early after a rain-interrupted final session, with Dawid Malan on 28 and Jonny Bairstow on 14, still behind by 127 runs.