Starc signs for rivals after early strikes against Eng

Defending 13 in the last over and then six from the last ball after having conceded five wides off the second delivery, Mitchell Starc got the job done for Australia against New Zealand in Dharamsala last weekend.

- Rutvick Mehta

As captain Pat Cummins ran in grinning to hug, Starc, far from displaying the body language of a bowler who has just had the last laugh in a high-scoring thriller, was strangely impassive.

On Saturday evening in Ahmedabad as Jonny Bairstow tickled a swinging yet seemingly harmless length ball down the leg to the wicket-keeper at the start of England's innings, Starc highfived his team-mates wearing a wide smile. Clearly, the Australia left-arm pacer is at his happiest, and at his lethal best, when he gets it swinging and strikes with the new ball. Which, apart from the swipe by India's Ishan Kishan in Australia's first game and the chop-on by Netherlands' Max O'Dowd in their fifth, hadn't happened for Starc in this World Cup. In their seventh game against England, Starc's new-ball burst took out Bairstow and Joe Root inside five overs to set the tone for Australia's defence of 286 and pump in another shot of positivity around the five-time champions' escalating campaign.