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England's struggle against bowlers named Mitchell spans a long time.

It started with Mitchell Johnson's ferocity in 2013, and has persisted through the skillful left-arm bowling of Starc.

In the seventh Ashes series of his career, Starc has secured 26 crucial wickets - stepping up in the unavailability of pace colleagues often more vaunted.

Just four more dismissals in the fifth Test in Sydney and his total will be the most successful by anyone in an Ashes series since Johnson 12 years ago.

How 'Toughening Up' Paved the Way for A Prolific Career of Starc

The Starc's dominant summer - the veteran paceman has also outscored three of England's specialist batsmen with the bat - is the peak of a Test career established through durability, wicket-taking skill and a keenness to evolve.

Over the past month and a half he has moved ahead of Curtly Ambrose, Harbhajan Singh, Shaun Pollock and, most notably, Wasim Akram on the list of cricket's greatest bowlers.

By eclipsing Wasim, Starc became the most successful left-arm fast bowler in Test history.

And when he takes the field at his home venue for the Sydney Test this week, it will be the 27th straight Australia Test in a row in which he has been selected - a wider run of only four missed Tests from the past fifty-six.

The days of a young Starc being told to "toughen up" by then Australia coach Tim Nielsen are a thing of the past.

"Initially it might have pricked him a little bit and that is likely the role to push athletes and to try and get them to be better than they have been in the past," the former coach stated.

"It was probably one of the discussions you have with a lot of young fast bowlers, especially when they start to break into international cricket.

"It happened a couple of times where he said he was a bit uncomfortable and might need a rest.

"It wasn't anything more than 'I reckon it's time we have got to find out how much your body can take before it breaks rather than stopping in case it breaks.'"

What Makes Starc So Difficult to Face?

Such is the transformation, the national team's coach Andrew McDonald has raised the prospect 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 thirty-seven.

The legendary Ray Lindwall, who played his last match in 1960, was the most recent Australian fast bowler to wear a Test cap beyond his 37th year.

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

Durability can get you so far. To join that club, you must be a constant danger too.

"Paradoxically, even though he is so good, is that at the top of his mark you can discern what he is planning to bowl," stated former England batter Dawid Malan.

"It remains necessary to be able to counter it but you can observe when he is preparing a seam delivery, detect when he is attempting to swing the ball."

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

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

Of the top-tier bowlers to have taken more than 350 in Tests, only South Africa's Dale Steyn and Pakistan's Waqar Younis have done so with a better strike rate than that of Starc.

He may go for runs, but the average number of balls he needs to take a wicket is remarkably low.

"What I found tricky is I always felt like I was in against him," Malan explained.

"It seemed I was seeing the ball well because he has such a fluid action, you can track the delivery and there are good pitches in Australia but periodically he'd bowl an absolute jaffa and you would just be heading to the pavilion.

"Between those deliveries, I wouldn't say you relax but you think 'I'm on top here.'

"He will bowl a half volley because he has searched for something, bowl a cut ball and then suddenly bowls a ball that angles in and takes my off pole.

"He consistently possesses that match-winning delivery. If you don't treat every ball seriously every single ball he just manages of taking your wicket."

A New Peak Built On Innovation

Though he may not touch the extreme speeds of his early career these days, Starc's typical speed has remained consistently around 87mph throughout the most recent phase of his career.

An talent he held from the beginning shows no sign of fading.

"His height was notable, very tall, and had exceptional pace through the air which stood out," Nielsen recalled.

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

Moving the ball in the air and crashing into the toes, pads or grille was, like Johnson, Wasim before him, Starc's primary method during the majority of his career.

But, after being omitted during the 2019 Ashes tour, Starc mastered the wobble seam delivery to his armoury 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 tour. Even Indian pace ace Jasprit Bumrah is behind by 12.

The wobble seam delivery has been a primary cause.

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

"He watched a lot of Stuart Broad and James Anderson and spoke to them about it.

"For a player aged 34 or 35 to continue improving is exceptional."

The wobbler has introduced greater mystery to Starc's game.

When delivering the ball with a wobble seam rather than looking to swing it, some deliveries move off the seam off the surface after pitching. Others will hold its line and find the edge of the bat.

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

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

"The crucial element to the wobble seam is to have your wrist position right aligned with the ball and let go of the ball off your fingertips," Gillespie explains.

"With the wobble seam Mitchell Starc will grip the ball with the seam angled towards gully.

"If you release it at the correct moment it will wobble its way down the pitch and that generates uncertainty for the batsman.

"He has diligently practicing at perfecting this because he feels that wobble seam going across brings the keeper and slips into play and makes his in-swinging delivery to the right hander more of a shock weapon."

The English team's struggle by bowlers named Mitchell may continue longer than you think.