Not having skipper Pat Cummins and the another Test regular in Josh Hazlewood, losing the toss and having two debutants, the odds were slightly stacked against Australia in the Ashes opener in Perth against England, before the tall left-armer in his 101st Test match decided to turn up and had the entire Western Australia and the world on his feet. Starc ended up achieving his career-best figures of 7/58 and it all started in the first over with the left-armer making Zak Crawley play the entire first over and the English opener eventually ended up edging it to Usman Khawaja at first slip.
The last two Ashes series had a couple of interesting first-ballers, with Starc bowling Rory Burns around his legs four years ago, while Crawley creaming one off Pat Cummins at home in 2023. It wasn't the first ball this time around but the first over as Crawley nearly got out of it until he didn't and Starc had his 24th victim in the first over of a Test innings.
Crawley was just the third Englishman on the long list, alongside Adam Lyth and obviously, Rory Burns. However, do you know, who was Starc's first-ever first-over victim in Tests? It all began in 2015 when Starc opened the bowling on Day 2 of the Sydney Test after Australia had piled on 572 runs in the first innings and got Indian opener Murali Vijay to play a wide one and edge straight to the wicketkeeper Brad Haddin.
Thus began the cult of Starc, who just didn't stop taking the new red ball in his hand to open the bowling for Australia and then peg the opposition back early. Vijay was the first one and had four more Indian openers join the list, including KL Rahul, Prithvi Shaw, Mayank Agarwal and Yashasvi Jaiswal. Jaiswal was dismissed twice in the first over during the last year's Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
Kraigg Brathwaite, Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Tom Latham and Abdullah Shafique are some of the other prominent names on the list. While Starc was quite quick into his work, he ended up reducing England to 39/3, adding wickets of Ben Duckett and Joe Root to his list in his first spell itself, which lasted seven overs.
Starc, who had taken 6/9 in his most recent Test, his 100th in the format, before the Ashes, bettered his career-best figures to take seven for the innings as the Bazball was neutralised in its first appearance on the Australian shores. However, England with their pace battery set up the Test match nicely, having Australia nine down for 123 and will be keen to get the final wicket early on on the second day and hopefully, bat better the second time around.