A year after being called "soft" by leg-spin legend Shane Warne, Mitchell Starc is proving his toughness by defying pain from spurs in his ankle to bowl with "all guns blazing" for NSW.
Last summer, Warne insulted the pace bowler with his harsh assessment during the Brisbane Test against India when, in his role as a television commentator, he criticised the lack of presence he saw in Starc's follow through.
Since then Starc has excelled, the highlight being named player of the tournament in Australia's triumphant World Cup campaign earlier this year.
In further proof he's becoming the iron man of pace bowling, Starc said the injury came with shouldering a massive workload.
"As far as I know I've bowled the most out of all the fast bowlers in the world over the last nine months," said Starc when asked if the Matador Cup was preparation enough for next month's opening Test against New Zealand. "There's no issue there with number of balls bowled. Fast bowlers go through a lot of pain. I'm not the first, I won't be the last . . . as far as I'm concerned I'm happy to keep bowling."
It was no secret Starc is carrying an injured ankle but rather than write off the summer by having surgery the 25-year-old revealed he would bowl until it was no longer possible.
"I don't think rest is going to do me anything," he said. "I'd like to be available for all the games of the summer. There's a few spurs in there that have broken a bit of the bone off in the joint. There's a bit of pain [and] as it's been documented I had a few cortisone injections in England.
"At the moment it's going all right and I'm still managing it. If things change and it starts affecting my bowling and my cricket then we'll look to go down that surgery path. I don't want to miss the summer through surgery. It's not affecting my cricket, it's all guns blazing and I'm going to push forward through [the] Matador Cup and look for a strong summer."
Starc proved he intended to make batsman sweat during his merciless Matador Cup performance against the Cricket Australia XI at Bankstown Oval on Monday. He took 6-25 from 8.4 overs and, ahead of Thursday's match against South Australia at North Sydney Oval, Starc said his main focus was to bowl as consistently well in the "red ball" format of the game as he does in the shorter versions.
"It comes back to playing those games," he said of his mastery of the white ball. "I've had a fairly long run with the white ball and I guess I know my game plan pretty well. I have those plan Bs, plan C if things aren't going well at the start. It's about time out in the middle, there's only so much you can bowl in the nets to get that match practice.
"Having some time with the red ball now I think I've closed that gap and worked on those consistencies. As time goes on, and the more cricket I play, hopefully the better I get."
