Australian bowler Mitchell Starc on Thursday said he could not be compared to Wasim Akram after he overtook the Pakistani great as the leading left-arm bowler in Test history.
Starc’s six-wicket haul on the first day of the second Ashes Test in Brisbane gave him 418 Test wickets, four more than Wasim.
“Wasim is still a much better bowler than me,” Starc said.
“As far as I’m concerned, he remains the pinnacle of left-handed pitchers and is certainly up there with the best pitchers to ever play the game.
“It’s nice to have them talking about it, but I’ll try to keep producing some.” Starc led the Australian attack in the day-night match at the Gabba in the absence of his usual strike partners Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, who are injured, and spinner Nathan Lyon, who went down.
“I don’t think I’ve ever played in an attack without one of the three playing,” Starc said. “So it’s a little different in that sense.”
The 35-year-old, who has taken 16 wickets in the series, was the only Australian bowler to consistently trouble the English batsmen on Thursday.
Starc surpassed Wasim’s mark when he bagged England’s Harry Brook, caught at slip, for his 415th wicket and third of the innings.
Widely recognized as the greatest left-arm bowler the sport has ever seen, Wasim played 104 Tests for his 414 wickets.
Starc, who debuted at the Gabba 14 years ago, was playing in his 102nd Test and shows no signs of slowing down.
He took a career-best 7-58 in the first innings of the first Ashes Test in Perth.
Starc is now 15th in the all-time wicket-taker list after surpassing Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh’s total of 417.
Now he has his sights on South African Shaun Pollock (421) and New Zealander Richard Hadlee (431).
He needs just 16 more wickets to surpass the most prolific left-arm bowler of all time – Sri Lankan spinner Rangana Herath, who claimed 433 wickets.
