Mitchell Johnson brought menace back into cricket

[related-post]

It would have been understandable if he had the summers of 2013-14 — the months he roamed as a monster with the ball — when he was younger, but to do it near the end is a stunning achievement. A career that was threatening to whimper out into a sigh of what-could-have-been has finished in awe. Fast bowlers, luckily, manage to ink their best years in our minds. Stumps flying, helmets pinged, toes crushed, icy stares, and close-ups of lips curling into an F-word get etched in the mind.

Johnson brought back menace into cricket at a time when it seemed it could only be found in streaming video chunks on YouTube. The toe-crushers from Pakistan had long gone, the thrillingly cold Caribbean glares had faded into ether, snarling Australians had disappeared, and even the solitary reaper of menace Dale Steyn had begun to turn gentler, more James Anderson than Allan Donald. Johnson and his handle-bar moustache couldn’t have come at a better time. And that’s why he will be fondly recalled, and more myths will be spun about him in the years to come.

A fearsome sight

The low slinging left-arm catapulted terror across at batsmen from England and South Africa in those couple of peak years. His unique release made the bouncers almost skid rapidly off the pitch and burst at batsmen’s faces. Metaphorical fangs also perhaps grew because of the iffy techniques of modern-day batsmen but to produce such fear in this body-armoured age also said a lot about him.

It made for a heart-warming story: a boy who had to face his parents’ divorce when he was just nine, youthful prodigy, years in wilderness, and eventual triumph. Pressure of a prodigy was squeezed upon him in his teenage years when Dennis Lillee hailed him as “once in a generation bowler”, that later was used as a taunt. The wilderness years came after 2009 Ashes, a time that coincided with personal problems with his mother who had publically voiced her displeasure with his girlfriend at the start of that cricket series. It’s not to say that the coincidence was consequential and affected his bowling but even if it was just incidental, it did make him vulnerable to the vocal pressures from the Barmy Army and the critical attention from the English press.

Former cricketers like the sympathetic Shane Warne, and empathetic Kim Hughes, who is intimate with vulnerable meltdowns, were publically alarmed at Johnson’s deteriorating confidence. Here are his own thoughts from that period. “There are probably a lot of people with personal problems, and I suppose it’s just one of those things. It is sad, and hopefully it will get better. She’s my mum, so she’s done things for me, and you want family to be there at your wedding. You want everyone to be together.” And here he is about the media. “Copped a fair bit of stick from their media straight away. And that was their plan… to get into our heads. It worked on me. I wasn’t used to it. I was used to being praised and hearing ‘good on you, well done, you’re going well’ and then all of a sudden they were picking on little things I’d never heard or ever thought of. It was pretty brutal.”

The wilderness years followed, triggered by a toe injury after three doleful years. In the intermittent time between March 2010 to November 2013, he featured in just17 of the 46 Tests Australia had played, taking just 50 wickets at 39.9. The toe-injury then sent him out of remission. After two months of apathy that pushed him to confess to a coach that he wasn’t missing the game and might not want to play again, he re-discovered his joy for cricket. Lillee, a name intrinsically linked with Johnson, had come calling. Also, a stray television glimpse of the then captain Michael Clarke pointing his badge on the helmet to show his fast bowlers where to aim at tailenders in a game thrilled Johnson, and something clicked inside.

On Lillee’s advice, he started to run on the streets of Perth with a cricket ball in hand. Shy of being recognised by his sun-baked city folk, he would run after the sun had sunk. With that ball clasped between his fingers. It would be a surprise if Nike hasn’t featured it in an advertisement yet. Eventually he hit stadiums for practice, the run-up lengthened, rhythm synced, and aggression amped up.

Fatherhood also helped. He has talked about how it relaxed him; that glimpse of life outside cricket allowed himself to savour what he does inside it. Even as he relaxed, he started to stream adrenalin rushes to the fans. His team-mates began to cackle in the slips at the havoc he wreaked, the fangs grew, and he became what he will be remembered for the most.

Aptly, the English team was the first to be ambushed by his violence. As good a batsman as Kevin Pietersen couldn’t avoid dread. On seeing Jonathan Trott being manhandled in the middle, Pietersen started to flutter as he wrote in his book. “I was thinking, ‘Shit! If this is happening to Trotty, what am I going to do about it?”

‘Awww’ moments

Even in this imperious phase, a couple of ‘awww’-moments came through. To drown out the taunting song (“his bowling is shite!”) from Balmy Army on this tour of redemption, he would hum a song that reminded him of his daughter, all through that Ashes. In nights, his wife Jessica, a karate blackbelt, would urge him to keep hurling those nasty bouncers at the English.

Daughter on his mind, a wife who wanted him to knock off heads by his side, bloodied batsmen on his sight – it was quite a blood-curling series. And a perfect way to remember Mitchell Johnson, the man who brought back thrill to Test cricket.