‘…enjoy battles against Virat Kohli’: Mitchell Starc looking forward to renewing rivalry with ex-IND captain

The pair are known to share a lot of respect for each other and Starc even briefly shared a dressing room with Kohli while playing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The rivalry will be renewed later this year in red-ball cricket when India tour Australia for five Test matches.

“I enjoy my battles with Virat Kohli just because we’ve played a lot of cricket against one another,” said Starc on Star Sports. “I always have some good battles. I’ve obviously got him once or twice and he’s no doubt scored a fair few runs against me. So, it’s always a good contest and one we both enjoy,” he said.

Big records await Kohli and Starc

Both Starc and Kohli are eyeing big milestones in the upcoming Test matches that they are scheduled to play, although the latter is arguably more likely to do it. Kohli has 8848 Test runs to his name with 29 centuries. Just one more ton would be enough to make him the fourth Indian batter after Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sunil Gavaskar to score 34 Test centuries.

A more distant record that Kohli could potentially cross, if he hits an especially prolific patch of form, is that he could become the third Indian after Tendulkar, Dravid and Gavaskar to score 10,000 runs in Test cricket. He is 1152 runs away from that mark but India play five Tests at home and five away in their upcoming red-ball run and Kohli has scored at these breakneck rates in the past.

A similarly distant record that Starc could be eyeing is to get to 400 Test wickets, thus becoming the fourth Australian to do so after Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Nathan Lyon. However, Starc would need to break the record for most Test wickets by an Australian in a Test series to get there in the series against India though, as he is 42 wickets away from the mark. Unlike India, Australia don’t play any Tests before the Border-Gavaskar Trophy this year.