Johnson: Australia’s shy executioner

MITCHELL Johnson’s cricketing career might be remembered for several stellar achievements.

For 313 test wickets at a strike rate better than Shane Warne or Glenn McGrath, for defining one Ashes series with his misery and another with his brilliance, for reviving both flat-out fast bowling and the handlebar moustache that once characterised its greatest exponents.

In the winter of 2013-14, Johnson’s 37 wickets at an average of 13.9 were not just the decisive factor in Australia winning back the Ashes 5-0. He dismantled a team and ended careers.

Even at the start of his great series there were few signs of what was to follow. His first three overs in Brisbane went for 15, his first six went for 32, often a long way down leg-side.

Then in blew a storm that would rage across the land for six weeks. Four in the first innings at the Gabba, five in the second. Five more English first-innings wickets in three overs in Adelaide, eventually six for 16 in 26 balls including a triple-wicket maiden and two separate hattrick balls.

Six more scalps in Perth, 5/63 in the first innings in Melbourne and 3/25 in the second; another six on the site of his great humiliation in Sydney. All of it hostile, whether aimed at throat or toes, all of it unstoppable.

His only consistency was in being inconsistent. Forty-seven wickets at 21 in eight tests before the 2009 Ashes, match figures of 3/132 at Lord’s that summer as England’s batsmen took him for six an over. A cumulative 0/170 in the first Ashes test of 2010, 9/82 in his next test at Perth, 2/134 in the following match in Melbourne.

“There were days when Mitch was as lethal a bowler as any in my experience,” his former skipper Ricky Ponting wrote in his autobiography. “At other times he was so frustratingly erratic and ineffective.

“For someone so talented, such a natural cricketer and so gifted an athlete, I found his lack of selfbelief astonishing.”

Johnson could be as shy and insecure off the pitch as he could be aggressive on it. During the 2010 Ashes you would see him on flights between tests looking like a lost child — cut off from the banter of his teammates.

Even at the height of his THE STORM: Mitchell Johnson destroyed England and ended careers in the 2013-14 Ashes powers, he preferred the company of his young daughter Rubika to the sponsors’ parties and gossip columns.

Even the iconic moustache was unintended armour, initially just a charity effort rather than deliberate.

His fiery predecessor Dennis Lillee had always seen something outstanding under the introverted exterior, describing him as a “once-in-a-generation bowler” when he first spotted him as a raw 17-year-old kid from Townsville on the Queensland coast. Not everyone else had the same faith.

It was fitting that Lillee led his great regeneration — advising him to lengthen his run-up and increase the hostility. Another Aussie fast-bowling legend, Craig McDermott, worked with him daily; Terry Alderman worked on his wrist position; Adam Griffith, his bowling coach at Western Australia, got him running in straighter, staying tall at the crease and remaining high in his follow-through.

Together, they transformed a washed-up great wide hope into the best fast bowler of his generation. — BBC.com