Left-arm wickets record
\nAustralian becomes leading Test wicket-taker among left-arm quicks with Gabba six-for
\nIslamabad
\nMitchell Starc declined to call himself the GOAT of left-arm pace, saying Wasim Akram was \u201cstill a far better bowler than I am\u201d after surpassing the Pakistan great as the leading Test wicket-taker among left-arm fast bowlers on day one of the Brisbane Test against England.
\nStarc claimed 6 for 71 at the Gabba, his fourth haul of six wickets or more in four innings, to once again shoulder the burden of leading an Australia attack shorn of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood at the start of the 2025-26 Ashes. That took him to 418 Test wickets, four more than Wasim, who tweeted his congratulations to Starc during the day\u2019s play.
\nAsked in his post-match press conference if he was now the GOAT (greatest of all time), Starc replied: \u201cI won\u2019t be calling myself that.\u201d He instead said he was feeling \u201cpretty tired\u201d, having extended his peerless record in pink-ball Tests to 87 wickets at 16.72.
\n\u201cI\u2019ll reflect on it later, Wasim\u2019s still a far better bowler than I am. So as far as I\u2019m concerned he\u2019s still the pinnacle of left-armers and certainly right up there with bowlers to ever play the game. So it\u2019s nice to be spoken of up around that, but I\u2019ll just try and keep churning a few out.\u201d
\nAustralia were again grateful to Starc, Player of the Match in Perth, as England fought their way to 325 for 9 at the close in Brisbane on the back of Joe Root\u2019s first Test hundred in Australia. They were missing 1,116 wickets from what would be viewed as their first-choice Test attack: the combined tally of Cummins and Hazlewood nearly doubled by Nathan Lyon\u2019s surprise omission.
\nHaving rattled England early with the wickets of Ben Duckett\u2013Starc\u2019s 26th in the first over of a Test innings\u2013and Ollie Pope, he was recalled by Steven Smith during the middle session having been held back for the twilight period. His second delivery back was angled across Harry Brook who played a horrid flat-footed drive, sending a high, fast edge to Smith.
\nIt took Starc to 415 Test wickets, moving past Wasim as the most prolific left-arm quick in history. A fair few stumps have been rattled by the pair: Starc\u2019s removal of Pope was the 99th time he had bowled a batter in Test cricket.
\nHe went on to dismiss Will Jacks, caught in the cordon, and Gus Atkinson, well held by Alex Carey off a steepling top edge, to notch his 18th five-for in Tests. When he had Brydon Carse caught behind in the same over as Atkinson, he was in with a chance of recording career-best innings figures for the third Test in a row, but England\u2019s No. 11, Jofra Archer, was able to keep Root company to the close.
\n\u201cRight now, [Starc] is the number one bowler in world cricket and the hardest one to face in all forms of cricket,\u2019\u2019 Wasim told News Corp before the Test. \u201cHe will go past my record and that is fine because he is a man for the job and a worthy champion.
\n\u201cI am actually really proud of this guy. He has done wonders for his side and for cricket as a game. There are a lot of youngsters in the world who just want to be Mitchell Starc. \u201cHe has plenty of cricket in him. I think he will get 500 Test wickets. He is a modern great and in the top bracket of fast bowlers in the history of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Left-arm wickets record Australian becomes leading Test wicket-taker among left-arm quicks with Gabba six-for Islamabad Mitchell Starc declined to call himself the GOAT of left-arm pace, saying Wasim Akram was \u201cstill a far better bowler than I am\u201d after surpassing the Pakistan great as the leading Test wicket-taker among left-arm fast bowlers on day one …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":90597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90611,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90602\/revisions\/90611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}