Starc quality with bat and ball in vain at Lord's
Mitchell Starc has won all four of the World Cup and World Championship cricket showdowns in which he's featured - and he was damned if he wasn't going to give it everything to maintain that proud record.
On a fraught Friday when Australia needed their main men to stand up and be counted at Lord's, nobody stood taller than the 35-year-old pacer - or should that really be allrounder - as he produced another performance deserving of a global triumph.
Starc not only delivered a tremendous half-century in a dogged last-wicket stand with Josh Hazlewood but then snapped up the two key early wickets that looked set to ensure they'd race to the mace.
And if a helmeted Steve Smith had not ventured quite so far forward in the slips and hadn't spilled the catch from another Starc snorter that should have sent Temba Bavuma packing, surely the evergreen leftie would have been in contention for player-of-the-match honours with South Africa seemingly sliding to defeat.
Instead, in the match's absolute turning point, Bavuma survived, going on to play a true captain's knock with his unbeaten 65 while struggling with a hamstring injury, and Smith ended up out of the final and on his way to hospital with a dislocated right pinkie.
At 2-76 rather than 3-76, Bavuma and an inspired Aiden Markram flourished in the sunshine on a wicket playing without the mischief it had done under the cloud-tinted skies of the first two days and it now looks inevitable Starc's unbeaten final record will end on Saturday.
His frustration became evident near the end of what looked a trying day for him. Indeed, when Markram began to dominate late on Friday, cutting Starc expertly away to the boundary, the southpaw quick could only wave his arms in clear frustration that the match was slipping away.
He must have felt he deserved more, especially after earlier having looked quite untroubled in compiling 59 with Hazlewood for Australia's last wicket, a partnership that lasted 135 balls, at that point comfortably the longest of the match.
It's often been suggested Starc could have been an authentic allrounder if he'd concentrated more on his batting, and he certainly looked the genuine article here as he remained unbeaten on 58 - his first Test half-century for six years but his 11th in total. Not bad for a No.9 who now has 2276 runs to his name.
Playing like a senior batter, he even shielded Hazlewood from the strike during much of their partnership, particularly against the Proteas' strike bowlers Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen.
It was the second-most deliveries he's faced in a Test innings since he made 99 in Mohali a dozen years ago, but until Hazlewood looked mightily irritated to get dismissed softly, he may have even fancied enjoying the bragging rights of eclipsing that career-best Test score which, oddly, he shares with his wife Alyssa Healy.
For once, he looks set to be denied, but it's been such a topsy-turvy showpiece that those 69 runs still needed by South Africa could look awfully hard to eke out should Australia's old Starc quality shine once more with a couple of quick blows on Saturday morning.
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