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It’s a question that the vast majority of Roarers won’t want to contemplate, for risk of weakening their own prejudices and preconceptions, but it’s one I’ve felt more and more compelled to ask this week.
If there’s been one constant in these forums since the Australian squad was named on Tuesday for the First Ashes Test in Brisbane next week, it’s been the universal belittling of Mitchell Johnson.
George Bailey’s selection has drawn some condemnation, as have the places in the squad of Nathan Lyon, Brad Haddin, David Warner, and Shane Watson. Michael Clarke strangely continues to garner angst, too.
None of them, not even collectively, have had the volume and velocity of vitriol this week as has Johnson.
I made the point in a comment earlier in the week that more than a bit of poetic licence tends to be applied when it comes to describing and analysing Mitchell Johnson’s bowling. It’s all very easy to gloss over his obvious talent, instead just focussing on his worst and the accompanying Barmy Army soundtrack.
Roarer Geoff Koop wrote on Wednesday that after Johnson went wicketless at the ‘Gabba in the First Test of the 2010/2011 Ashes series, “I realised, and so should have the selectors, Mitchell Johnson just wasn’t up to Test standard.”
Johnson had more than 160 Test wickets to his name by that stage, already ahead of the likes of Bill Johnston, Rodney Hogg, Michael Kasprowicsz, and Paul Reiffel on Australia’s all-time wicket tally.
Since then, he’s gone on to become one of only fourteen players to have taken more than 200 Test wickets for Australia, going past names like Miller, Alderman, Davidson, and Thompson in the process.
Now, before any angry words start getting smashed into the comments section already, let me state clearly that I’m not for a minute suggesting that Mitchell Johnson is a better bowler than Alan Davidson and co. I mention these names to illustrate just where Johnson sits in the record books.
Regardless, the point in this is that he hasn’t got to where he sits – he has 450 international wickets overall – by being the wayward park hack that many of you like to portray him as.
“But he went at more than four an over in 2010/2011, Brett. He hasn’t conceded less than three-a-half runs an over for the last four years, Brett.”
“His average against the other ‘big three’ nations is nearly ten runs above his career average, Brett.”
Yeah, I know. The stats are there for all to see. You don’t even need to hunt for them often; they usually get posted along with the streams of negativity that accompany the commentary of his career.
Stats are part of history, and in cricket especially, they most definitely shape the narrative.
And so it’s very easy to look at numbers, like a Test average of 29.1, and an economy rate of three runs per over, and especially a strike rate of a wicket every 58.6 balls and form the judgements that we’re all fond of singing until the cows comes home, right?
Figures like that just prove Johnson is hopeless, indeed, not up to Test standard, right?
Wrong. Those numbers are Peter Siddle’s.
Johnson’s 205 Test wickets, for the record, have come at the slightly higher average of 30.9, and a slightly better strike rate of 55.3. Yet the narrative of Siddle’s 167 wickets is almost the polar opposite.
Johnson’s decline as a Test bowler over the years has been inescapable. As much as first slip has tried to show no anguish as Brad Haddin takes yet another ball in front of him, the ball still took that wayward path.
But why is it just assumed, and indeed, chorused that there can be no comeback? Why has Johnson been all but written off by all and sundry?
Genuine question, how many of you that have walked the well-worn “Johnson will fail again” path over the last few days have allowed yourself to think that Johnson could actually bowl well?
And why couldn’t he? Stats only paint the picture of past performance; they’re not an ironclad crystal ball into the future.
The reality is Johnson is just as likely to bowl well this summer, than he is to bowl as poorly as many of you expect.
So then why the universal derision? Why has there been very little pondering that he might just be capable of getting it right?
Is it some kind of sadistic desire to see failure, simultaneously releasing the overwhelming need to type the words, “I told you so…”?
The reaction to this piece today will be interesting.
My gut feeling is that if the overarching question is genuinely considered, the only real response is along the lines of “there’s no reason Johnson can’t bowl well”, and the comment numbers will probably be low.
After all, it’s not often we concede we might be wrong. Certainly not in a medium that can be revisited.
On the other side, if the general response is even more bulk disparagement of Johnson, then it just about proves how narrow-minded we can be.
And that would be incredibly sad, that sports fans won’t even allow themselves to ponder the kind of triumphant return that is one of the very reasons we consume sport in the first place.