Scared Poms on the radar
AUSTRALIA’S prized pace attack has been shown footage of England’s biggest names looking scared and helpless to serve as motivation for executing a Mitchell Johnson-style assault at the Gabba.
New hitman Pat Cummins is gearing up for his much anticipated debut Test on home soil and his voice almost quivered yesterday when revealing the impact vivid replays of Johnson’s carnage four years ago had on the bowling group.
The team watched video of England stars Stuart Broad and James Anderson looking like they “didn’t want to be there” and the Aussies walked out convinced that they could repeat history.
Australia are adamant there are also “cracks underneath the surface” for batting linchpins Joe Root and Alastair Cook and have warned that David Warner’s pre-series taunts of aggression and hate were not a publicity stunt but very much the real deal.
With the terror created by Johnson playing over in his mind, Cummins will come off his long run on Thursday inspired that he can be crowned the new dictator of fear.
“The ones that stick out to me are the Gabba and seeing a couple of their bowlers, Stuey Broad and Anderson … from our point of view they looked like they didn’t want to be out there,” Cummins said.
“They didn’t want to bat. They’d try to swerve away from the balls before he’d kind of even released them.
“Hopefully, we can create that kind of anxiety. Seeing his highlights up here at the Gabba, it was pretty awesome … showing the impact that transcended the cricket field.
“It put fear in them. When they were sitting around waiting to bat, in between games, they were thinking about him.
“Just talking about the environment they created that series, (we want to) replicate that somehow with our squad.”
Cummins said he was finally letting himself get excited about playing a home Test match, after feeling for years as if it was getting further and further away from him.
In 2013-14, it seemed from the outside like Johnson was a one-man destroyer but Cummins said the message from senior players involved in that famous series, is that the bowling attack must hunt as a pack.