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“I didn’t doubt that I could get back into the Test team,” said Mitchell Johnson at the close of the third day at Adelaide.
For a long while, that must have been a lonely outpost of certainty in which to reside. But cricket is a great vehicle for proving the uselessness of predictions, and if Johnson has consistently been called anything, it’s unpredictable.
He did have some recent support from a prestigious quarter, with Sachin Tendulkar perhaps eyeing a career as an oracle now that his cricketing days are done.
At Tendulkar’s farewell press conference he ignored some sniggers from the press when singling out Johnson – a bowler who had never unduly troubled the Little Master – as the man to watch during the Ashes.
“The way I saw Mitchell Johnson bowl here in India, if he is part of the squad, it should be interesting,” he said.
Even a couple of weeks earlier, though, few would have predicted Johnson would be anywhere near an Ashes side.
Fewer still would have predicted he’d be its dominant player.
And we’d be down to single figures if we gathered the people predicting he’d play the central role in the first three bowling innings, all but deciding a five-Test series in the space of one and a half.
Today, with the second-best bowling figures of his career after one of the great bursts of sheer pace, the unpredictability matrix had produced exactly that.
At this point in the series, Johnson has over half the English wickets to fall – 16 out of 30.
He’s taken 4 for 61, 5 for 42, then 7 for 40. That’s at an average of 8.9 runs per wicket, and a strike rate of a wicket every 20.8 balls. He’s won one Test match and set up another.
For a long time the cliché applied to Johnson was ‘X factor’.
A phrase that was supposed to hint at inexplicable power instead became an algebraic gesture at uncertainty. He could be devastating on the field but also devastated.
I was among many who expressed my ongoing distrust. As selectorial fervour cooled he began to find himself left out of sides, a toe injury in November 2011 providing a sympathetic alibi for his initial exit.
Passed over for the mid-year tour to England, the return series wasn’t a consideration. At 32 years old he was headed to the shiny pasture of T20 tournaments and charity games.
But like a curse had been levelled by a very thorough voodoo priest, identical injuries struck down James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc, Jackson Bird and Patrick Cummins, clearing the decks of every potential rival.
Meanwhile, in a surreally bat-centric ODI series in India, Johnson was demonstrating a remodelled run-up and extreme pace on unhelpful wickets.
He was the only bowler to hold his ground in a series where all others were slaughtered. That voodoo theory isn’t entirely implausible.
Other broader predictions have been just as ruthlessly exterminated. England were pre-series favourites, featuring batsmen who ticked the side past 500 whenever they pleased last tour.
This year they’ve been demolished each time without reaching 180. All of us spoke of a dead Adelaide pitch on which bowlers would toil: Johnson had a run of 6 for 12 in 5.2 overs, including a triple-wicket maiden.
“I was really excited about coming here and bowling at Adelaide Oval,” he said after play. “We’ve come from India on very flat wickets, we knew we could get some reverse out there.” But it wasn’t really swing that was Johnson’s ally, just highly accurate pace.
The pitch couldn’t stop that tearing through batsmen, with four of his victims bowled and one lbw, nor did it stop his short balls reaching uncomfortable elevation.
His demolition of Alistair Cook on the evening of the second day was masterful.
His off-stump line had Cook poking and missing, clearly spooked by being unable to lay bat on ball, equally clearly exhausted after a long day’s mauling in the field.
One delivery bounced off the thigh pad, one bobbled up toward midwicket. Then the clean-up ball: one that straightened a little but had Cook missing by a full bat’s width, completely done for pace.
Matt Prior’s dismissal the next afternoon was just as clinical. One fast and full on leg stump, making him balance that way to knock it clear.
One short that struck Prior in the chest. One shorter that flew over his front shoulder and past his head. Then with the target rattled, one just outside off that drew a desperate attempt to make contact and an edge behind.
Graeme Swann went similarly, panic inducing the edge to slip.
The performance was all down to things we wouldn’t have predicted from Johnson: accuracy, confidence and consistency. It’s doing this two matches in a row that is most pleasing for Johnson, and most important for his side.
“To be able to back up a performance like Brisbane and do it here, it’s a really nice feeling for me,” he said with a broad smile.
“There’s been talk in the past I can have those performances where I blow a team away and then the next one not turn up. So I think that’s why today it was a bit more emotional for me, and special.”
Brad Haddin’s comments indicate that consistency might not be the worry it once was. “You could tell by his run up that they were going to come out with some serious pace,” said Haddin after that spell to Cook late on the second day.
“He just looked smooth. He was coming in to the crease and he looked like he was just guided in. I noticed up on the board he had the six fastest balls of the day after his first seven or so balls. That ball that got Cook was a cracker.”
There shouldn’t be any surprise that Johnson has surprised us. It’s what he does, one way or another.
But if that remodelled run-up means his problems with accuracy have been be ameliorated, then the next few weeks will be as thrilling as the last two.
Put simply, if Johnson can remain predictable for the rest of this series, we’re set to witness one of the all-time great Ashes performances.
Geoff Lemon is a writer and radio broadcaster. He joined The Roar as an expert columnist in 2010, writes the satirical blog Heathen Scripture, and tweets from @GeoffLemonSport. This article was first published by Wisden India, in a new-founded Ashes partnership.