Mitchell Starc Reveals He Is Using His Wife Alyssa Healy's Bat In Ashes 2023

The switching of bats seems to be a beneficial one for Starc who scored his highest Test score in almost four years against India in the WTC final before playing a crucial knock at Lord's vs England.

Mitchell Starc of Australia and his wife and Australian Cricketer Alyssa Healy, walk on the pitch after day five of the ICC World Test Championship Final between Australia and India at The Oval on June 11, 2023 in London, England.

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Mitchell Starc may be the first player in the history of cricket to stride out in Men’s Test using his wife’s bat. Seven months past now and Starc has been preferring to use Alyssa Healy’s bat rather than the one he was using previously. 

"It's a little bit lighter," Starc was quoted as saying by Perthnow.

"(South Africa's) Anrich Nortje was bowling pretty fast through the summer, so I used a lighter bat. She didn't know it was gone, so it was fine."

"I was cleaning out a few cricket bags at home, she was away on a tour. I said, 'you know there's three bats in this bag' and she didn't know.

"I said, 'there's two now, the other's in my bag!'."

The switching of bats seems to be a beneficial one for him. 

He scored his highest Test score in almost four years against India in the second innings of the World Test Championship final, and then faced 72 balls earlier this month at Lord's to help England set a fourth-innings target.  

It's not the first time he and Healy have exchanged bats, as they're both sponsored by Kookaburra. Healy used one of Starc's during the 2016-17 WBBL season, hitting 55 off 38 balls against the Sydney Thunder and 46 off 31 against Perth.

"It's one-all because she took one of mine a few years ago," Starc jibed.

"She cut the end of the handle off, so it was no good to me after that."

Starc stated it was only after simply adding an extra grip to Alyssa Healy'bat which helped him to handle it better.

After travelling to Bristol to watch the wicketkeeper-skipper Australia in the opening ODI of the multi-format Ashes, the 33-year-old has been able to spend time with Healy this week.

He had already attended the opening two days of the Trent Bridge Test match, while Healy was only able to attend parts of the first three Tests of the men's tour. Other Australian men's players travelled across Europe during the team's mandatory four-day rest time, taking vacations in Spain, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, and Paris.