Starc all praise for RCB bowling unit

Mitchell Starc has been Virat Kohli’s go-to man this Indian Premier League.

Fast and capable of landing his yorkers in the right place, the Australian has been Royal Challengers Bangallore’s stand-out bowler, though his 13 wickets from 10 matches at an economy rate of 7.25 per over may not fully justify the quality show he has put on.

The 24-year-old New South Welshman, who is dating Ian Healy’s niece and Australian women’s cricketer Alyssa Healy, talks about his maiden IPL experience and his showdown with Kieron Pollard among other things.

Excerpts.

Personally, you have had a good season with the RCB. How do you look at it, experience wise?

Experience wise, it has been fantastic. It is my first IPL and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had obviously spoken to the Australian guys who had come over in the past. It’s been great. RCB is a great place to play. So it has been easy to come over and be involved. The team has been fantastic. Probably (we) haven’t done as well as consistently as we would have liked but we are still in the running.

How do you assess your attack as the lead bowler?

Our bowling was fantastic and probably the best in the IPL through the first leg in Dubai. That really kept us in the running. That comes from having a great bowling coach in Allan Donald who kept us relaxed and didn’t stress too much, even when a few balls went bad. We were very good in Dubai, but coming back to India in Chinnaswamy (the M Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore), it was a very different place to bowl. It is a lot smaller and has very good wickets. I guess we struggled a bit to find our execution and we paid the price for it in a couple of games. 

Most of the Australians who are doing well this IPL were part of the World T20, so what went wrong in Bangladesh?

We are trying not to think too much about Bangladesh. Yeah, even in Bangladesh the conditions were different from here in India and as we saw, things just didn’t work for us over there. We didn’t play to our own expectations and to some of the expectations that were put on us. I think it’s important not to forget what happened but learning from the experience. I think all but two guys from that squad hadn’t been to Bangladesh before. It was a very new experience for all of us.  

Australian left-arm seamers like you, (James) Faulkner, Mitchell Johnson have been doing well, anything special between left-arm seamers and Australia?

No, the three of us have all spent some time together at the Australian set-up. We all work together on certain things. The left-arm quicks stick a bit closer together than the rest. For me, I guess it has been nice to learn a bit off Mitch (Johnson). Seeing him do well for the last 12 months has been fantastic. He will probably say that his finding of form came through the IPL last year. It has been fantastic to see him do well and for me to learn off him. Not only Mitch, but off James as well, he was here last year at the IPL and he did well. Yeah, it’s good to see the left-armers do well.

Kieron Pollard incident...Was it just in the heat of the moment or like Shane Watson says, it has been building up between Australia and West Indies?

I don’t know... I’m not sure. Not too much good to say about that. Kieron has done that sort of stuff in the past, him pulling out, but I am not going to say too much about it. Not many nice things to say about it. But we have to behave like role models. It comes hand in hand with playing high level cricket. We see a lot of viewers on the ground and people watching TV, a lot of young viewers. So I think that example in Mumbai is something that should not be seen in cricket. It’s not something I would like to be associated with and hopefully something I will never again be seen doing.