Mitchell Starc gave Australia a dream start at the Adelaide Oval on Friday, picking up a first-ball wicket to dismiss Yashasvi Jaiswal. It was his best outing in Test cricket, as he scrambled India’s batting order to put Australia on top.
Here are five key stats from the opening day’s play in Adelaide:
6/48: Mitchell Starc registered his career-best Test figures, equaling his 6/50 against Sri Lanka in Galle in 2016. This was also Starc’s first five-wicket haul against India in Tests.
4: Starc is the only bowler to have taken two more than five wickets in Pink-Ball Tests. He now has 72 wickets in day-night Tests.
3: Starc became the second bowler after Windies batsman Pedro Collins to take a wicket on the first ball of a Test match three times. All three of Starc’s victims were left-handers – Dimuth Karunaratne in 2016, Rory Burns in 2021 and Yashasvi Jaiswal on Friday.
50: Jasprit Bumrah became the first bowler to record 50 Test wickets this year. He is only the third Indian pacer after Kapil Dev (75 in 1983, 74 in 1979) and Zaheer Khan (51 in 2002) to achieve the milestone in Tests in a calendar year.
13: Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli both registered their 13th single-digit scores this year in international cricket across all three formats, falling to 3 and 7 respectively.