Mitchell Starc is a magician with the pink ball: Matthew Hayden

Fiery pacer Mitchell Starc bowled a breathtaking spell on Day 1 of the pink-ball Test between India and Australia, being played at the Adelaide Oval, on Friday, December 6. The left-arm seamer garnered immense praise from the legendary Matthew Hayden, who called him a "magician with the pink ball".

After losing comprehensively in Perth, Australia would have hoped for a strong start in the second Test. Starc provided exactly that as he got the better of the in-form Yashasvi Jaiswal with the first ball of the match after Rohit Sharma won the toss and opted to bat first. Starc went on to pick up the wickets of KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Harshit Rana to finish with remarkable figures of 6/48 in 14.1 overs.

“He has that scrambled seam delivery that goes across the right-hander, but when he does have that ability—which he did—I must admit I was a little surprised. I’ve never really seen the pink ball swing into the sort of 40th over and so aggressively swing as well. By that stage, he used a really important word, and it’s a bit of an underrated word as well, and that’s ‘momentum.’ It was all in favor of India," Hayden said on Star Sports.

"A difficult position to come back from in life and sport is those opportunities to wrestle back momentum, and Mitchell Starc did that in only the way he can—when the lights are like the way they are and with that beautiful-colored ball in his hand. He’s just a magician with the Pink Ball," he added.

Hayden noted that the Aussie bowlers were conservative in the first 20 overs before Scott Boland and Starc came to the party and helped the hosts dismiss India for 180. Furthermore, he specifically pointed out Boland for sticking to stump to stump line which got the hosts vital wickets eventually.

“I think Australia bowled in two halves, to be honest. I thought their first maybe 20 overs, they were very conservative. It was like they knew that the pink ball was going to start to swing. And when Scott Boland came around and just started getting into the line of the stumps, that was the turnaround," the former Australian legend continued.

"Around about that 35th over, we saw some of those missiles that Mitchell Starc started. That was 45, 50 overs in, and it started to swing. That’s what earned them the strong position they find themselves in today," Hayden concluded.

They have to make the batters play as much as they can: Sunil Gavaskar

The legendary Sunil Gavaskar said that the Indian bowlers have to make the Australian batters play at more deliveries. He expressed his disappointment at how Jasprit Bumrah and Co. used the pink ball as Australia finished Day 1 in a strong position at 86/1.

Also Watch: Jasprit Bumrah, Marnus Labuschagne engage in playful banter in Adelaide

“They have to make the batters play as much as they can. And this is what happens when you make the batters play as much as you can. You can set them up by bowling a couple of deliveries outside and then get the ball to move back in, as it did to Nathan McSweeney in the Perth Test, or to Labuschagne in the Perth Test, like what Bumrah did. The Indian bowlers have not really used the pink ball as well as they should have," Gavaskar said.