Mitchell Starc has 433 Test wickets, two World Cup Player of the Tournament awards, and an Ashes series where he took 31 wickets at 36 years old. When asked about the biggest change in his career, he did not mention a delivery, a series, or a coach. He pointed to his head.
“Excuse my language, but it’s just been letting shit go.”
Mitchell Starc, cricket.com.au feature, August 2026
The quote is blunt. It is also the most honest thing Starc has said in 15 years of international cricket. And it did not come out of nowhere. This is a shift Starc has been living since January 2, 2019, the day he deleted every social media app from his phone and stopped reading what anyone outside his inner circle had to say about him.
There’s no secret to what’s been the key to Mitchell Starc’s brilliance. It’s all between the ears.
MORE: https://t.co/kiBvGBxBwJ pic.twitter.com/4LLEOG1Iik
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) August 5, 2026
For most of his career, Starc used criticism as fuel. He admitted in 2020 that he took negative commentary as “a bit of a ‘f*** you'” and channelled it into aggression on the field. When Shane Warne called him “soft” on air during the 2014-15 summer, Starc’s response was a guttural roar after bowling M Vijay in the first over at the SCG. It worked in the moment. It was not sustainable.
The breaking point came during the 2018-19 home series against India. That summer, Fox Cricket and Channel Seven both launched as host broadcasters alongside radio networks, flooding every press box and breakout area with former players offering opinions. Warne, McGrath, Johnson, Waugh, Gilchrist, Ponting, Lehmann, Chappell. All of them needed something to say. Starc was struggling for rhythm, and the noise found him.
“I was someone who listened to and read everything. And then that year we had multiple broadcasters start, everyone coming in with radio and whatever, that’s when it really doubled down on the noise and it really got away from me. That’s where I learnt it was best to let things go and only worry about the groups that mattered most to me.”
Mitchell Starc, cricket.com.au, December 2022
Starc later said he felt like he had 47 different bowling coaches at one point during that series. India won 2-1. Australia were outplayed, and Starc finished questioning whether he needed to change who he was as a bowler to fit the attack’s style. He considered becoming more economical, more like Hazlewood and Cummins. It was the wrong instinct. Trying to be someone else made him worse.
The reset came on January 2, 2019. Starc removed Twitter and other social media apps from his phone. He stopped reading articles, columns, and broadcast opinions about himself. He narrowed his circle to the people he trusted: his wife Alyssa Healy, his NSW bowling coach Andre Adams, and his teammates. It is the kind of shift that sounds simple but is rare in professional sport, where the mental side of fast bowling is often talked about but rarely acted on this decisively.
The results were immediate. In February 2019, he took ten wickets against Sri Lanka in Canberra. He was the leading wicket-taker at the 2019 World Cup. Over the next eight Tests after the shift, he took 45 wickets at 18.42. A wicket every 34.8 balls. He called it “the most consistent period” of his career at the time.
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A fast bowler who is thinking about what someone said about him on television that morning does not bowl the same way as one who is not. It is not abstract. It is physical. When a quick is tense, when the mind is cluttered with external opinions and the urge to prove a point, the body tightens. The run-up shortens by half a stride. The front arm, which controls the bowling shoulder’s rotation, drops early. The wrist locks instead of snapping through the release. The seam wobbles instead of holding its axis. The ball stops swinging.
Starc at his best is a bowler who runs in tall, with a high front arm and a wrist that stays behind the ball until the last possible moment. That combination of height, pace, and late wrist snap is what produces the inswinger that has cleaned up over a hundred openers in Test cricket. When the mind is free, the arm is free. When the arm is free, the ball does what Starc wants it to do. That is what “letting shit go” actually means for a fast bowler. It is not a motivational slogan. It is the difference between the ball swinging at 148 and the ball sitting up straight at 142.
Starc himself said he felt like he had 47 bowling coaches during the India series. A professional fast bowler cannot process 47 sets of instructions and still trust his own body. The moment he stopped listening to all of them and trusted what Adams and his teammates told him, his bowling arm went back to doing what it had always known how to do.
What 433 Wickets Look Like When the Noise Stops
The numbers since January 2019 tell the story more clearly than any quote. Starc reached 300 Test wickets in December 2022 against South Africa at the Gabba, becoming only the fifth Australian quick to reach that mark. Glenn McGrath, who finished with 563 wickets and remains the benchmark for Australian fast bowling longevity, was the standard Starc was measured against. His teammate Usman Khawaja, who had watched the transformation from the other end for over a decade, pointed to his head when asked what changed.
“He always had the skills, but it was more about what was going up there for him which is the case for all international players and he’s found a way through it.”
Usman Khawaja, cricket.com.au, December 2022
In July 2025, Starc took his 400th Test wicket in his 100th Test, against West Indies at Sabina Park. He did it with career-best figures of 6-9, bowling West Indies out for 27, the second-lowest total in Test history. His five-wicket haul came from just 15 balls, the fastest in Test history. He joined Glenn McGrath as the only Australian fast bowler with both 100 Tests and 400 wickets.
Then came the 2025-26 Ashes. Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, the two bowlers Starc has shared the new ball with for the better part of a decade, were unavailable for parts of the series. At 36, Starc carried the attack. He took 31 wickets at 19.93, was Player of the Series as Australia won 4-1, and scored two half-centuries with the bat. He became only the fourth player to take 30 or more wickets in an Ashes series this century, joining Warne, Johnson, and McGrath.
In September 2025, Starc retired from T20 internationals to protect his body for Tests and the 2027 ODI World Cup. He was direct about the reason.
“For lack of a better term, I want to milk my body as much as I can for as much Test cricket as possible.”
Mitchell Starc, cricket.com.au, September 2025
He now has 433 Test wickets in 105 matches. Among left-arm fast bowlers with more than 100 Test wickets, no one in history has struck more frequently than Starc, who takes a wicket every 47.4 balls. He is ranked third in the ICC Test bowling rankings at 36.
The pudgy kid from Sydney who was switched from wicketkeeper to fast bowler by his junior coach Neil D’Costa did not find consistency through a new delivery or a fitness programme. He found it by deciding that the only voices worth hearing were the ones inside his own dressing room. Seven years later, 433 wickets later, Mitchell Starc said it plainly. Letting shit go was the biggest change he ever made.
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