Australia's pacer Mitchell Johnson, center, is congratulated by teammates after taking the wicket of Jamaica Select XI's batsman Nikita Miller, unseen, during the first day of a cricket tour match in Trelawny, northern Jamaica, Friday, May 16, 2008. AP Photo/Andres Leighton
A lot of the talk in the lead up to Thursday’s third Test, apart from the merits or otherwise of the misfiring Mitchell Johnson, has centered around the type of surface the two sets of players can expect when battle commences on the first morning.
Pitches at Edgbaston are fairly easy paced and lean in favour of the batsmen and the majority of County Championship games there in the recent past have ended in stalemate.
That said, the head groundsman, Steve Rouse, has compared his pitch to jelly and reckons it will provide assistance to the seam bowlers.
To me, that looks like a classic case of covering your own back.
While the weather has been a bit unsettled over the past couple of weeks, it hasn’t been quite as bad as Rouse would have you believe.
I played a club match on Saturday on a bone dry wicket and if a club can adequately cover a pitch, a Test ground should certainly be able to.
By getting his excuses in early, Rouse has a perfect alibi if the wicket does significantly assist the bowlers, a scenario that is unlikely to occur.
It should be a pretty good surface, one that will give the toss added importance.
Both sides, and especially Australia, will want to bat first unless the conditions dictate otherwise and they would need to be heavily weighted towards the bowlers for the opposite to happen.
Controlling the game is a damn sight easier with runs on the board and Australia don’t want to be chasing the game given that they are 1-0 down.
And this brings us back to the flavour of the month.
Johnson’s underwhelming performance at Northampton should have convinced those that matter that action has to be taken.
To keep protecting him by comparing him to his colleagues or his English counterparts is doing him a disservice.
Take his case in isolation. Johnson is haemorrhaging runs at an alarming rate without taking wickets. He’s got too much talent not to recover, but at this moment in time he simply shouldn’t be playing.
As an Englishman, I would want him to be in the Australian side come Thursday. If I was Australian, I’m not sure I could say the same.
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