Australian pacer Mitchell Starc said his team have a wonderful opportunity at their hands to rectify the mistakes made in the last Test series against India.
The left-arm quick believes improvements made in the previous two years will help the team make amends for the painful 2-1 home series loss in the 2018-19 season.
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"You never want to lose a series and you certainly never want to lose one in Australia," Starc told ESPN’s 'The Cricket Monthly' before the first Test of the four-match series starting Thursday (December 17) with the D/N encounter in Adelaide.
"India were just better than us throughout the (2018-19) series with bat and ball."
"Sure, we haven’t hidden away from that. We needed to be better in all facets of the game and this summer’s certainly a chance to rectify that."
Starc, who is a proven threat with the pink-ball under lights, also said he has made an effort these past few years to completely shut down the outside noise and don't let the criticism get to his head.
The fast bowler has copped a lot on that front, including from the great Shane Warne, but is certainly a more matured customer now.
"I just felt I probably tuned into the noise too much, and I guess I went from someone who didn’t mind seeing or reading that sort of stuff and taking that as motivation to prove people wrong," said Starc who was outstanding the previous summer against Pakistan and New Zealand.
"Just with having multiple broadcasters and a whole bunch of radio and print and the rest, I probably read into that noise a bit too much."
"The expectations on the group, media-wise, were huge. I think I just found it was a lot of unnecessary time spent thinking about it or reading about it."
"Going from someone who saw that as a motivation to prove people wrong, I probably bought into the noise too much, or started digging myself a bigger hole if I wasn’t bowling the way I wanted to."
"Certainly, throughout that series as well — I felt like I had 47 different bowling coaches at one point and all these different opinions that I just didn’t need to listen to," he added.
In 2019, the 30-year-old further drifted away from all the talk outside by deleting his social media accounts.
"Since then (last home Test series against India) I’ve basically gotten off Twitter and not (been) reading anything really, and not really caring what other people’s opinions are."
"It’s just had me in a clearer mindset to focus on what I can control and bowl the way I want to bowl."
"That’s certainly how I’ve approached it since and having people I trust around me, whether it’s talking to Alyssa (Healy, his partner) or having conversations with ‘Dre (Andre Adams, NSW bowling coach) or the staff around the group, or the players," he signed off.
(Inputs from PTI)
