Pat Cummins in awe of Mitchell Starc's pink ball skills as Australia tighten grip on Adelaide Test

Sport360 staff 17:11 01/12/2019
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  • Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins.

    Mitchell Starc’s mastery over the pink ball has left his fellow Australia pacer Pat Cummins impressed following yet another excellent outing for the left-armed bowler under lights against Pakistan.

    Having picked up four Pakistan wickets on day two of the final Test in Adelaide, Starc added three more to his name on Sunday as Australia inched closer towards an innings win.

    It took Starc’s overall pink ball wickets tally to 33 which makes him the most prolific bowler in the short history of day-night Tests.

    The fast bowler’s display at the Adelaide Oval came in for special praise from the No1 ranked Cummins who has taken three wickets in the match so far.

    “He’s someone who just looks to be at the top of his game at the moment,” Cummins told cricket.com.au after the third day’s play in the Adelaide Test.

    “Even last night under lights, when I was bowling it didn’t feel like there was much sideways movement. And he was tearing in and got four wickets out of nowhere.

    “Whenever he’s bowled in the past few weeks, he’s looked a class above. He’s brilliant.”

    Starc, whose ODI average of 20.99 is considerably better than his Test average of 27.93, believes that the pink ball is very similar to the white ball used in the ;limited-overs formats.

    “I still think it’s more like a white ball than a red ball, so that’s probably playing in my favour there,” the pacer stated.

    “It still went soft for us on that wicket, as we saw through the early afternoon session today where it didn’t move around much at all and the wicket was quite flat.

    “When it’s going through those stages, it’s trying to control the scoreboard, and we did that fairly well at times and then Yasir got away from us a fair bit.”

    Yasir Shah became the third No8 batsman to register a Test ton in Australia against the hosts, with the leg-spinner’s fighting knock of 113 helping Pakistan post 302 in their first innings. The visitors, however, were made to follow-on ultimately and still need 248 runs to avoid an innings defeat with seven wickets in hand.

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