Starc leads war of words

Australia speedster Mitchell Starc may be out of tomorrow's Boxing Day Ashes Test through injury, but he had a verbal bouncer for England pace spearhead James Anderson, who said last week that beyond Australia's first-choice pace trio they 'have a problem'.

Starc, the leading wicket-taker of the five match series that Australia have already won 3-0, will miss the fourth match in Melbourne tomorrow with a bruised heel but hoped that his replacement Jackson Bird continues inflicting body blows on the English batsmen.

"I think they have got bigger things to worry about than the depth of Australia's fast bowlers," the BBC quoted Starc as saying in Melbourne yesterday. “I hope he [Jackson] takes five wickets and sticks it up for those daft comments from the Poms. They haven't taken 20 wickets so far in the series and we have and they are having a crack at our depths."

Combative Australia opener David Warner joined the fray.

"He went very quiet as soon as he saw the wicket quite flat at the WACA. Sometimes you pick your times when you want to go at people, sometimes you go into your shell like a turtle,” Warner was quoted as saying by the BBC.

"We've probably shut them up a little bit at the moment. Hopefully this gets them up and going and they fire some barbs at us, because I love that. I love when we're in a contest and I feel like they were quite flat in Perth."

England all-rounder Chris Woakes played the voice of reason.

“The amount of chat that goes on in an Ashes series in ludicrous, to be brutally honest. The thing that is most important is how you perform. We haven't performed well enough and we'll try to put that right at the MCG."