With the 2023 edition of Ashes around the corner, the banter and mind games have already started between England and Australian players.

Recently, veteran England pacer Stuart Broad create quite a stir by saying that he doesn’t consider last Ashes Down Under a real one since the COVID-19 restrictions were too harsh and the English players found themselves in a lot of discomfort due to quarantine protocols.  

"Nothing was harsher than the last Ashes series. But in my mind, I don’t class that as a real Ashes," Broad was quoted as saying to the Daily Mail.

"Nothing about that series was high-level performance because of the COVID restrictions. The training facilities, the travel, not being able to socialise. I’ve written it off as a void series," he added.

Now, Australian speedster Mitchell Starc has hit out at Broad’s comments, stating that the England cricketers got plenty of leeway and got away with hard quarantine during the Ashes in 2021-22.

"The funniest thing out of that was they called it quarantine on the Gold Coast. I did seven of them. That was the easiest by a country mile," Starc was quoted as saying to the Sydney Morning Herald.

"The Poms had the pool, the gym, they were in a resort on the Gold Coast, they trained at Metricon (now Heritage Bank Stadium), weren’t confined to their rooms and had their families there," he stated.

"Was that really quarantine? They were still allowed to play golf on tour. Is that an excuse for 4-0? Dunno. It was a pretty good series to be a part of," Starc added.

England were totally outplayed in the 2021-22 Ashes series. They lost the five-match series 4-0, only managing to salvage a draw in the Sydney Test.

The Ashes 2023 is slated to get underway on June 16 at Edgbaston.