My favourite Mitchell Johnson memory comes when he didn’t allow himself to think negatively. It was the day he presented the new Johnson, where, despite an expensive start, he broke an England-dominated Ashes world.
It is Brisbane, 2013, Day 2. England are 0-22 off six overs.
Johnson has bowled three of these overs, conceding 15 runs. What makes his figures look worse is not only do they accurately reflect his first spell, but the bowler to compare him with at the other end is Ryan Harris.
While Johnson is busy spreading his best and his worst around the wicket, Harris has got figures of three overs, one maiden, 0-6.
Peter Siddle replaces Johnson in the attack. A four-ball bowler has been quickly shoved out of the attack to allow a dot-ball bowler to complement another dot-ball bowler. And while they operated in tandem for four overs – the time it took for Harris to remove Alastair Cook – it was thinking time for Johnson.
Thinking time. We’ll never know exactly what Johnson was thinking during those four overs, but since it is always speaking time on the internet, we can find out what others were thinking.
“Typically erratic Johnson.” “Shades of the last Ashes in Australia.” “He shouldn’t have been recalled.” “For pity’s sake.”
Indeed, even though he was immediately recalled back to the crease to face Jonathan Trott, he bowled his first two overs of his next spell at Michael Carberry. He pitched the ball shorter and shorter, but Carberry hit him for 11 off those two overs, and Johnson’s figures read five overs for 26.
Had Carberry been on strike for the start of Johnson’s next over, Nathan Lyon might have bowled that fateful over. Johnson would have been given even more time to think, to think negatively.
To think of Trott’s mastery of the Australian attack in 2009 and 2010-11, not the startled batsman Johnson had recently dominated in one of those bilateral ODI series in England you don’t take much notice of because you only care about the Ashes.
But Johnson didn’t allow himself to be rattled.
And with the first ball at a soon-to-be-startled Trott, there was incontrovertible proof of the new Johnson. People in straightjackets look more comfortable than what Trott did facing that delivery.
While he got his gloves up just in time to stop the rearing ball from slamming into his helmet, he was awkwardly crouched and moving in the direction of point. And when he recovered a normal posture, he wasn’t greeted with sledging from Johnson revealing insecurity, but a fierce glare.
Trott was dismissed in Johnson’s next over by a far less dangerous delivery. With his confidence up, Johnson made Kevin Pietersen realise through his silence to Pietersen’s taunts that he was a new man. But Harris accounted for him to leave England at 3-82. Carberry, who had started so well, was suffocated by Lyon, and then faced three balls of Johnson from around the wicket.
The difference was so great Carberry would have been forgiven for looking at the scoreboard and checking it was the same left-arm quick he’d been facing all afternoon. The first ball thundered into Carberry. Carberry only saw the second delivery properly when it was in Brad Haddin’s gloves. The third ball ended up in Shane Watson’s hands.
At that stage, England were 4-87 off 36.3 overs. When 40.3 overs had been bowled, England had been reduced to 8-91. It was the first of the numerous and spectacular collapses on that tour.
Questions remained for Johnson after that second day at the Gabba, many of which were quickly and emphatically answered. And they were answered in a most entertaining way. The old world of English dominance over Australia had been violently, almost unbelievably, overturned.
But as entertaining as they were, that bouncer is perhaps the predominant image.
Or the sight of James Anderson’s middle stump lying on the ground first ball in the next Test at Adelaide, leaving England nine down and with a deficit best measured in how giddy it made Australians feel rather than the actually number of runs.
Or the earlier ball that took Cook’s off stump. Or Johnson’s mastery of Graeme Smith. Or…
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