Kolkata Knight Riders pacer and player of the 2024 IPL final Mitchell Starc Photo | AFP
CHENNAI: Kolkata Knight Riders pacer and player of the 2024 IPL final Mitchell Starc was pleased that his best came at the later stages of the league after beating Sunrisers Hyderabad to win the trophy on Sunday night in Chennai.
“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this season. It’s been great and as you say it leads into a World Cup. That’s the other side of the benefit of being here, against some amazing players in an amazing tournament. It’s a great lead up to a World Cup. The success has been fantastic. But it’s left a lot of players in a good position heading into the World Cup. Next year, I don’t know the schedule exactly but as I said, I’ve enjoyed it and look forward to being back next year. Hopefully it’s in purple and gold again,” said Starc in the post-match press conference.
The Australian also admitted that moving forward he might play more franchise cricket, leaving one format behind in international cricket. “Look I’m certainly closer to the end of my career than the start. One format may drop off, there’s a long time before the next one-day World Cup and whether that format continues for me or not, it may open doors for more franchise cricket,” he said.
While both SRH and KKR have been known for posting big totals, the final was a low-scoring affair and Starc had no complaints whatsoever. “It’s nice to see a ground not go for more than 200 runs,” he laughed before adding, “So that’s good for the bowlers. I think it was different from a lot of the wickets we’ve seen through the IPL. Obviously there was a bit of swing early for both teams. It was probably a bit on the slower side, I think held in the wicket a little bit and I don’t think it was as much turn as a few nights ago in the Royals vs Sunrisers game, but there’s certainly some grip in the wickets. So yeah, I think we bowled fantastically well to keep them below 120. And then our batters have been fantastic through the tournament again.”
Although Starc, who did not start the year well, has enough experience to handle the highs and lows through an IPL season, he had a familiar face in Bharat Arun to turn to if needed. “I’ve worked with Bharat at RCB when I was there years ago as well. It was nice to reconnect with him this year. It certainly wasn’t so technical. It was probably a bit more tactical, some suggestions in trying different things, certainly for batters I hadn’t seen or knew much about, I was going to him or Shreyas Iyer or GG (Gautam Gambhir) with that sort of thing,” Starc said. “I have played a lot of cricket so I know how to manage myself there. I haven’t played a lot of T20 cricket in the last few years so for me it was trying to find that rhythm of the T20 format and I was trying to stay ahead of batters,”he added.
Starc finished the season with 17 wickets. But initially he was criticized for not delivering despite being signed by KKR for a record `24.75 crore. “It’s nights like tonight or the last game why I’ve been picked to come here. As I said, I’m glad to be contributing. I mean there’s been jokes throughout and there’s been friendly banter about price tags and what not. It doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve sort of had plenty of critics throughout my career and I think the pressures of being an overseas player or a price tag, you expect that coming to the best domestic league in the world,” explained Starc.