Australia fast bowler Mitchell Johnson retired from international cricket on Tuesday with 313 Test wickets, becoming Australia’s fourth highest Test wicket-taker after Shane Warne (708), Glenn McGrath (563) and Dennis Lillee (355)
By Russell Jackson/Theguardian.com
For a bowler of Mitchell Johnson’s explosive pace, there’s probably no surer sign that it’s time to retire than seeing Perth morph into a batsman’s paradise, and so it has proven with the Australian calling it quits on the final morning of this run-spree Test against New Zealand.
Having turned out to be Johnson’s international swansong, there has been no shortage of symbolism in this game; youthful Mitchell Starc piercing the 160kmph barrier as senior pro Johnson lagged in the 130s; Johnson passing the Test wicket tally of Brett Lee, the express bowler whose mantle he himself had once taken; the Waca Ground and its once-great pitch – made so in large part by Johnson’s mentor Dennis Lillee – also headed for the knackery.
But fast bowlers aren’t remembered for the point at which they slowed down and started to fade, they’re frozen in time at their peak, when tailenders backed fearfully towards square leg and greats of the game were putty in their hands. On the latter point, Johnson’s sublime 2013-14 will stand as the summer-long monument to his fearsome reputation and also ensured his place in Australia’s fast bowling pantheon.
The seeds of that magical Ashes summer were sewn months earlier in the 2013 one-day international series in England, when the hosts had struggled with his hostility and speed. They wondered whether he really was a changed bowler and didn’t have to wait long for the fears to be confirmed.
Kevin Pietersen recalls that moment in time vividly in his new book. “I remember opening the batting and thinking, ‘goodness we’ve got a new beast here’.” And a beast he was, savaging the likes Jonathan Trott, Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Ian Bell with some of the most intimidating fast bowling of this or any era.
Pietersen provides fascinating detail of the fear that seeped through England’s ranks at that time, first internally in each player and then more openly among the touring squad. (Tailenders? “absolutely petrified”.) Taking one look at the treatment dished out to Trott early in the first Test, Pietersen absconded to the nets and asked England assistant Mushtaq Ahmed to bounce him with wet tennis balls. “I was thinking, ‘Shit! If this is happening to Trotty, what am I going to do about it?’.”
A key weapon in Johnson’s armoury in this purple patch was the uniqueness of his low, slinging action and the always-uncomfortable left-arm trajectory he was catapulting it down from. His bouncers were flatter and fizzed – more likely to spear in at the batsman’s throat than sail safely over their heads. Yorkers angled in formidably to England’s left-handed opening pair of Cook and Michael Carberry, in search of broken toes and stumps. The statistics from that series tell the story themselves; 37 wickets at 13.97; staggering strike rate of 30.5; three five-wicket hauls; and a series-leading 51 maidens as England’s batsman suddenly sought survival alone.
And it wasn’t just what Johnson physically did at this peak, it was the pregnant pause it left in the mind of his opposition. Panic and doubt crept into England’s batting and for an entire glorious summer, never really left. “He can for sure make me do something that I don’t really want to do,” says Pietersen now, still talking about those spells in the present tense. “He did that a lot, to everyone, and it was not pleasant. Mitchell Johnson destroyed us.”
On the back cover of Pietersen’s book is a photo of Johnson leaning into his path as he takes a single, handlebar moustache bristling as he fires off a verbal salvo to go with the ball he’s just sent down. England almost broke him four years earlier, now he was their waking nightmare.
That summer was as thrilling as a 5-0 series drubbing could possibly be. Seemingly everything Johnson did gripped Australia’s attention. Everyone has their own personal stories, I’d guess. Late on day two of the Adelaide Test I had to drag myself away from the TV and head to a Melbourne hospital to welcome a friend’s first child into the world and there, reclined back in the maternity ward, mother, father and child sat with the cricket playing on the screen above them, as Johnson put the frighteners into England in the final session.
I walked into the room right as a snarling Johnson bent back Alastair Cook’s off-stump and so gawped openly at the screen when I should have been celebrating the miracle of human life. I’m sorry William, you’ll understand when your dad shows you the video one day. You were born in the summer of Mitch, surely you’ll bowl fast yourself one day.
The irony of Johnson’s unique physical prowess, of course, is that while the low-flying action ensured that a three-over burst of extreme pace would have any batsman in the world in trouble, it also prevented him from swinging the ball or pursuing a plan B.
This being the case, even slight drop-offs in speed and enthusiasm could quickly lead to the wrong sort of scoreboard damage. On a pitch and unforgiving as the tarmac that greeted him this week in Perth, this effect was multiplied. What this has underlined, in his final days in the baggy green, is the precise and delicate balance of physical, emotional and environmental attributes required to perform the remarkable feats Johnson did at his best and how we should cherish the instances when they combine with such perfection.
It’s always sad when a once-great batsman loses his eye and even more dreary when a bowler of real venom loses the pace that made him a champion. But a champion Mitchell Johnson was, as well as a cricketer whose awesome displays of hairy, wild, throwback fast bowling made the sheer sight of Test cricket as great as it’s ever been.
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