Starc's career-best performance in isolation was an extraordinary feat. That he did it without his partners in crime, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, and when Scott Boland had a rare off day, on day one of what England coach Brendon McCullum called "the biggest series of all our lives" only added to the significance of the performance.
Yet none of it was surprising. He took a wicket in the first over of the series, nicking off Zak Crawley. But that was not a shock; he had done it before, in 2021-22.
He took another in his fourth, trapping Ben Duckett plumb lbw. He turned Test cricket's second highest all-time leading run-scorer Joe Root into a pretzel in his fifth with a 142.8kph delivery that pitched on leg and veered across to take the edge for a seven-ball duck.
Not a single delivery in the 35-year-old's first spell was under 140kph, and he had figures of 5-3-10-3. At lunch he had figures of 8-4-24-3, while the rest of Australia's attack had returns of 15-1-76-1.
In his ninth over, after the break, he zipped a 140.9kph wobble-seam offcutter through Ben Stokes' gate to dismiss the England captain for the tenth time in Tests.
The tail stood no chance as he took his 17th Test five-for, and his fifth against England, bowling them out for 172 in 32.5 frantic overs.
Key moment
Crawley's dismissal set the tone in the opening over. But the dismissals of Root and Stokes were hammer blows in the context of the series. Talk about Root's search for a drought-breaking century in Australia had been a huge part of the build-up to the series, while the talismanic Stokes was determined to lead from the front. Starc went through them like a hot knife through butter with two soul-crushing deliveries.
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The numbers
27 The number of times Starc has taken a Test wicket in the opening over of an innings. Only James Anderson has more, with 29.
3 The number of times in 2025 that Starc took six or more wickets in consecutive Tests. He had taken 6 for 9 in Australia's previous Test, against West Indies in Kingston, and then took 6 for 75 in the second Ashes Test, in Brisbane.
What they said
"[The ball] was a bit like a hockey puck. It was out of shape pretty early. I don't think it was going to swing at all. It didn't really stay on axis. So those wobble-seam deliveries seemed to be the one to work for most guys through the day."
-Mitchell Starc
-Mitchell Starc
The closest contender
Marco Jansen
6 for 48 vs India, second Test, Guwahati
Jansen's performance went a long way towards emulating the greatest all-round performance by a visiting player in India, which was a century and 13 wickets in 1980 by Ian Botham. After making 93 with the bat in South Africa's first innings of 489, he rose above the flat pitch with aggressive short-pitched bowling to take his fourth five-wicket haul in Tests. Nobody has ever taken as many wickets with bouncers in a single innings in India since the advent of ball-by-ball records. Those nasty bouncers took out Dhruv Jurel, Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Jasprit Bumrah on an otherwise placid surface and set up South Africa's 2-0 series sweep.
6 for 48 vs India, second Test, Guwahati
Jansen's performance went a long way towards emulating the greatest all-round performance by a visiting player in India, which was a century and 13 wickets in 1980 by Ian Botham. After making 93 with the bat in South Africa's first innings of 489, he rose above the flat pitch with aggressive short-pitched bowling to take his fourth five-wicket haul in Tests. Nobody has ever taken as many wickets with bouncers in a single innings in India since the advent of ball-by-ball records. Those nasty bouncers took out Dhruv Jurel, Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Jasprit Bumrah on an otherwise placid surface and set up South Africa's 2-0 series sweep.