For those impatient souls waiting for Australia’s young Test pacemen to become more reliable, here’s the bad news.

Coach Tim Nielsen says they’re very much a work in progress.

While Ben Hilfenhaus has barely missed a beat, Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle’s performances have been as exasperating at times as they have been exhilarating on the Ashes tour.

But the triumvirate’s performance at Headingley alongside steady seamer Stuart Clark was a reminder that Australia have a potentially world-beating attack on their hands.

Not that Nielsen is keen on comparisons with great attacks of the recent past.

“We have to be careful when you are talking about guys like (Glenn) McGrath and (Jason) Gillespie, both those blokes have taken well over 250 Test wickets,” Nielsen told AAP.

“Not a lot of blokes have done that.

“These kids are still very much in the embryonic stages of their careers.

“There are probably always going to be days where they don’t go as well as they would like and other days they go gang busters.”

Australian fans have been spoilt in the last decade for consistent seamers with McGrath having a band of probing sidekicks in the likes of Gillespie, Clark and Michael Kasprowicz.

Nielsen said the current three amigos, despite their range of talents, were far from the finished article and pointed to the fact they had only played 43 Tests between them.

The way they speared the England batting lineup, collecting 17 of the 20 wickets with the Ashes on the line at Headingley, must have turned even the sharpest critic around.

However, next week’s Ashes decider at The Oval promises to be something else.

As if a one-off clash for the Ashes wasn’t enough, the south London match is also adored England allrounder Andrew Flintoff’s farewell Test.

It all adds up to a highly emotional clash and skipper Ricky Ponting needs his quicks to give the English fans reason to head to the bar and not to their seats.
Unlike Australia’s last appearance in the capital a month ago.

That was disastrous as Johnson and Siddle’s radars malfunctioned at Lord’s and England openers Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook set up the home side’s victory in the opening session and a half.

“There have been a couple of blips on the screen in this series where we have have not bowled as well as we would have liked,” Nielsen said.

“But over the four Tests of the series to date, they have done a bloody good job.”

Hilfenhaus, Johnson and Siddle may have been handed the blessing of chief selector Andrew Hilditch this week but Nielsen predicted challenging times ahead.

“I don’t know if anyone in cricket goes through their career having a waltz all the time,” he said.

“They are very early in their careers and they are going to find at different times that conditions do not suit them as much.

“There will be times in Australia where the ball maybe won’t swing as much for Hilf as it has done here, or the wickets are lower and slower for Sids and Mitch, a bit like in India.

“The biggest thing is that they don’t lose faith in themselves.”

On that last topic is Johnson, the left-armer looked shot only a fortnight ago only to complete a remarkable form revival in Leeds.

There is just a hint of the AFL coach about Nielsen, he is fiercely protective of his players and no more so than Johnson.

“He knows exactly where he is at,” Nielsen said.

“There was a lot of talk in this series that he shouldn’t be playing, he did not have his best game at Lord’s.

“There is no doubt about that but that might end up being one of the best weeks of his career long term because he was actually under a lot of pressure and he fought his way back.”

To their credit, the Australian camp has done well putting Johnson back on track.

Some of their public comments following the Northampton tour match that the left-armer wasn’t far away from his best appeared plain laughable at the time.

But whatever positive reinforcement has been happening behind the scenes, Johnson is back in business.

And so is Australia.

“I think we are seeing a really nice progression … I think by the next 12 months they will definitely get better,” Nielsen said of his young quicks.

Here’s hoping.

© AAP 2012

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