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The English team's Mitchell problem goes back a generation.

It began with the sheer pace of Mitchell Johnson in 2013-14, and has persisted through the magical left-arm pace of Mitchell Starc.

In the 2025-26 Ashes series, Starc has secured 26 wickets - excelling in the absence of pace colleagues sometimes more highly rated.

Four more scalps in the fifth Test in Sydney and his total will be the highest by any bowler in an Ashes series since Johnson 12 years ago.

The Path to Resilience Paved the Way for Many Summers of Starc

The peak period for Starc - the 35-year-old has also scored more runs than three of England's specialist batsmen with the bat - is the high point of a Test career founded on longevity, bowling prowess and a keenness to evolve.

Over the past recent period he has overtaken a host of bowling legends and, most notably, the great Wasim Akram on the all-time Test wicket-takers' list.

By eclipsing Wasim, Starc became the leading left-arm seamer in Test history.

And when he lines up at his home venue for the Sydney Test this week, it will be the 27th consecutive Australia Test in a row in which he has featured - a broader streak of only four missed Tests from the past fifty-six.

The era of a young Starc being told to "show more resilience" by then Australia coach Tim Nielsen are a distant memory.

"At the time it might have affected him a little bit and that is probably the role to push athletes and to try and get them to be more robust than they have been in the past," the former coach stated.

"This was probably one of the discussions you have with a lot of emerging pacemen, especially when they start to come into international cricket.

"There were a couple of times where he said he was a bit injured and might need a spell.

"The message was simple than 'I think it's time we have got to test how much your body can take before it breaks rather than pulling up in case it breaks.'"

Why Is Starc So Difficult to Face?

So great the improvement, Australia coach Andrew McDonald has raised the possibility of Starc, the most senior of the world-class pace trio, touring England for the next Ashes series in England, by which time he will be 37.

Ray Lindwall, who played his last match in 1960, was the last Australian quick to wear a Test cap beyond his 37th year.

Achieving this would give Starc the chance to join cricket's 500-wicket club and become only the fifth pace bowler to take 500 wickets.

Stamina can get you so far. To reach that milestone, you must be a constant danger too.

"Interestingly, even though he is so good, is that at the start of his run-up you can discern what he is planning to bowl," says former England batter Dawid Malan.

"It remains necessary to be able to handle it but you can observe when he is preparing a seam delivery, detect when he is trying to swing it."

Periodically in Starc's career when he has been faulted for leaking runs, something with which he has said he has learned to accept.

That drawback is heavily counterbalanced by his remarkable skill to take wickets.

Of the elite bowlers to have taken more than 350 wickets in Tests, only South Africa's Dale Steyn and Pakistan's Waqar Younis have done so with a superior strike rate than Starc's.

He may be expensive, but the mean number of balls he needs to take a wicket is incredibly efficient.

"The difficult aspect is I always felt like I was settled against him," Malan says.

"It seemed I was seeing the ball well because he has such a smooth run-up, you can track the delivery and there are excellent batting surfaces in Australia but one in every 10 balls he'd bowl an absolute jaffa and you would just be walking back.

"At other times, I wouldn't say you ease up but you think 'I have got him here.'

"He might deliver a poor ball because he has experimented, bowl a slower ball and then suddenly bowls a ball that starts on middle and takes my off pole.

"He has just always got that wicket-taking ball. If you don't treat every ball seriously every single ball he just has the ability of taking your wicket."

A New Peak Founded On Innovation

Although he no longer bowls at the extreme speeds of his second Test these days, Starc's average pace has remained solidly above 87mph throughout the most recent phase of his career.

An ability he held from the beginning shows no indication of declining.

"He was tall, proper tall, and had really good air speed which stood out," Nielsen recalled.

"He could also swing the ball back into the right-handed batsman."

Moving the ball in the air and crashing into the batsman's stumps or body was, like Johnson, Wasim before him, Starc's key strategy during the majority of his career.

But, after being dropped during the 2019 Ashes tour, Starc mastered the wobble seam delivery to his repertoire by the time he came back to England in 2023.

No-one in the world has taken as many as Starc's 118 wickets since the start of that 2023 series. Even India superstar Jasprit Bumrah trails by 12.

The wobble seam has been a primary cause.

"Starc just shows you can teach an old job new tricks," says former Australia pace bowler Jason Gillespie.

"He studied a lot of England's veteran seamers and consulted with them about it.

"For a player aged his mid-thirties to evolve his game is remarkable."

The wobbler has added greater doubt to Starc's game.

When hurling down the ball with a wobbling seam rather than looking to swing it, some deliveries deviate sharply off the surface after pitching. Others will go on with the arm and bring in the edge of the bat.

Zak Crawley and Joe Root both were dismissed by Starc wobble seam deliveries in the opening hour of this series.

Starc's number of dismissals caught in the slips has jumped by almost ten percent in the past few years.

"The key to the wobble seam ball is to have your fingers and wrist right aligned with the ball and let go of the ball off your middle finger," Gillespie explains.

"With the wobble seam Mitchell Starc will hold the ball with the seam angled towards the off side.

"If you release it at the right time it will wobble its way down the pitch and that creates doubt for the batter.

"He has diligently practicing at developing that because he feels that the wobble ball going across brings the slip fielders into play and makes his inswinger to the right hander more of a shock weapon."

The English team's struggle by bowlers named Mitchell may persist for some time yet.