Ball two: Just short of length, so the swing is negated. Guptill rides the bounce all the way down to third man for a nerve-settling single.
Ball three: McCullum is on strike. He cut a remarkably relaxed figure during the morning and is unlikely to have given a second thought to the local papers that are proclaiming him the key wicket, the man standing between Australia and a coronation. McCullum murders the ground with his blade, hunches down in preparation and is beaten all ends up by a 150km/h inswinging yorker that defeats off stump by a couple of inches. You can see almost Starc grow a bit taller.
Ball four: McCullum digs another trench in the wicket, grips the handle like an axe and makes himself low again. He's going to charge and Starc knows it. McCullum goes down the wicket and away to leg. The ball swings prodigiously and follows him, again beating him for speed and swing. It comfortably misses the leg pole but, more importantly, comfortably misses the skipper's bat. For a man who plays with lightning fast hands and a wonderful eye, this must be a little discombobulating.
Ball five: Is it unplayable, or has McCullum's mind been muddled? Whatever the case, it's an absolute ripper of a yorker that bends back and beats what, by McCullum's standards, is a half-baked drive. It sends Starc on an arcing run and a good portion of the MCG into delirium. It would have reverberated through the New Zealand shed. McCullum, as has been discussed before, is a luxury item.
His failure is planned for, but it was the manner of his domination that set the nerves on edge. As strange as it sounds, a horrible skied catch to cover would have been more in keeping with how New Zealand have gone about their business.
Ball six: Kane Williamson, for the first time all summer searching for runs, is asked to steady the ship. Starc thunders one into his pads and stifles an appeal. It is swinging too much. New Zealand 1-1 after 1, and it felt like an emergency call out, too.
It is worth remembering that McCullum won the toss and chose to bat. Even the inherently pessimistic knew it was the right thing to do. Within six Starc thunderbolts, amazingly, it suddenly looked like very much the wrong thing to do.
New Zealand, so often at this tournament, have won games by setting a tone that other teams cannot live with. McCullum, more than any other player whether it was with bat or field placings, was the man responsible for that.
Starc ripped that away from him, away from New Zealand. Grant Elliott and Ross Taylor did their best to restore some equilibrium but, by that stage, a massive score was out of the question.
Starc's first over was brilliant, it was brutal. He was, damn it, talismanic.
