It’s not easy following overseas Ashes series. When the sport that you love is happening almost precisely when the human body is calibrated for sleeping, it takes proper dedication and commitment to watch every ball. I thought I had this commitment in 2013/14. But Mitchell Johnson broke me.
It was my first term at university. It was hardly uninterrupted revelry, but a mixture of nights out and all-night essay crises meant that I was pretty accustomed to not getting much sleep. I’d lapsed into a diet of caffeinated drinks and energy bars, fuel for the fire of frantically typing. Surely, I thought, it’s not that much of a leap to stay up for the cricket instead of work, to be blankly staring at Sky Go rather than Microsoft Word? I decided that after an intensely unbalanced work-cricket relationship, it was time to redress the balance. I decided to try and watch every ball. But Mitchell Johnson broke me.
Off the back of the tepid, one-sided affair that was the 2013 Ashes, the first half hour at the Gabba was actually quite a depressing omen for the series, even though England did well. Stuart Broad reducing Australia to 83-4 suggested continued dominance. The pathetic edge from Watson to Swann at second slip sticks in the mind because, at that exact moment, I thought: “If it’s going to be this easy, I can’t be bothered to watch this.” I was overconfident. I remained so as Australia were whittled out for an under-par 295. But then Mitchell Johnson broke me.
The lethal combination of Harris’ nagging, good-length accuracy and Johnson’s trebuchet aggression was too much for England. They subsided for 136, with Mitch taking the wickets of Carberry, Trott, Root and Swann. The solidity which had been the backbone of Flower-era success for the England team was dribbling away in front of my drooping, tired eyes. And after David Warner had almost nonchalantly smashed a run-a-ball hundred, Mitch did it again, but this time it was worse. He took Trott again, as well as Pietersen, before unleashing a procession of bouncers and yorkers that had the tail-enders running scared. Broad’s flick to a head-high bumper down the leg-side gave away the fear in the side. I fell back into bed. Mitchel Johnson had broken England.
But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Where was the Johnson of the 2009 tour? The tattooed snake-oil salesman who’d hustled the South Africans on some of the world’s hardest pitches, but looked incapable of landing one on the cut strip at Lord’s? The man who at the Brisbane Test on the last tour had gone wicketless, runless and dropped a catch? This was an upgraded model: Mitch 2.0. Someone had fixed Mitchell Johnson.
We all know how the series went from there, the pattern of destruction repeating itself across the country, thousands of Aussies pouring into stadiums to watch Mitch do what he did last week. Still, as regular as clockwork, I managed to get up and watch him do it again. It would have been easier to tape the first Test and watch it over and over again in the afternoon. The sustained excellence that Johnson managed across that Australian summer is one of the great sporting achievements of the modern era, because sport isn’t supposed to work like that anymore. All the technology, all the data and video footage available to coaches is supposed to stop such unabashed dominance before it gets embarrassing.
“You just need to take leg-stump guard”. “Leave any ball that’s not a half-volley on middle and leg”. “Duck”. Surely, someone in the England set up one piece of advice that could stop the bleeding. I shouted at enough of them on the screen. But Johnson kept going, unrelenting, continuing the greatest individual performance in modern cricketing history. And yes, I do mean better than Flintoff.
By the fourth Test, I gave up trying to watch the matches live. I hadn’t written an essay for around three weeks, and I hadn’t been fully awake in a lecture for pretty much the same. Mitchell Johnson was costing me my degree, and he was doing it whilst he was destroying my heroes. Pietersen was on the way out. Swann and Prior were on their last legs. Trott was never the same again. Hauling myself out of bed every night to watch the stars of my childhood humbled by this moustached genius was emotionally draining. Mitchell Johnson had very much broken me.
But looking back on it, I’m glad he did, because otherwise I might not have remembered him with the same frightened fondness which I do now. After all, other than that triumphant series, his career was mediocre compared to that, just another quick-but-wild seamer who could have done so much more. But now, he’ll go down in cricketing folklore as one of the most iconic, if not necessarily greatest, bowlers of all time.
I’m not sure he’d trade the best strike rate of any Australian bowler for a lower economy, a longer career or more wickets. Johnson had the devastating effect he did because of his flaws, which dictated that when it went wrong it was very wrong, but when it was right, it was the Ashes.
