Johnson backs Australia's pace battery
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Beware everyone: Mitchell Johnson believes the Australian pace battery, comprising Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and himself, have the potential to destroy opponents if the defending champions can couple their "aggression" with "smart" game-plans. "We just have to be smart about our bowling but I think we're still going to be aggressive," Johnson said on the eve Australia's first warm-up match against India on Sunday.
Johnson felt the ability of all the three tearaways to consistently cross the 90 mph-mark left the batsman with not much room for escape. "That's sort of the plan, isn't it?", Johnson quipped, asked if he liked the fact that batsmen did not get any respite with him coming in as first-change after the new ball pair of Lee and Tait. "We can all bowl at between 140 and 150 [kph]. Shaun and Brett can even bowl over that. No one really is too keen on facing anything like that. We'd be one of the only teams going around like that. So it'd be a bonus for us," Johnson said.
As for a workable strategy, Johnson believes he and his fellow quicks would put to use the short ball consistently. "We look at trying to get the ball to reverse, trying to use our change-ups. We're still going to try and bowl short balls over here. We know that especially a lot of the Indian batsmen aren't too keen on it," Johnson said with a smile.
Incidentally, the trio has played together only twice so far: in the 2007 CB Series against New Zealand and recently in the sixth match of the ODI series against England, in which the England made a record 334. Though Australia escaped to victory with four balls to spare (Johnson played his part with the bat after being promoted to No.4), a view was formed that the fast men were vulnerable to leaking runs if their aggression went wrong.
Johnson did not buy that opinion at all. "We work pretty well together," he said. "Obviously there was a lot of talk about us leaking too many runs. [But] Brett Lee did an exceptional job through that one-day series as you saw. With that experience, I think it's going to help myself and Shaun through this tournament. It probably showed towards the end of the one-day series," Johnson said.
On Thursday Ricky Ponting had said that Lee, who was the top wicket-taker against England, was better suited to play a defensive role while he wanted both Johnson and Tait to bowl as quick as possible. "Brett has been able to turn himself into a bit more of a defensive-minded bowler. He has changed his approach a bit more, probably a bit more nous. I've been really impressed with Brett since he's come back into the Australian team. In the six games he played back in Australia [against England] I think he was the pick of our bowlers in maybe all but one," Ponting said.
But he wanted Tait to just go for the maximum clicks. "Shaun Tait, I just want to let him go, let him run in and bowl fast and take wickets," he said. "Johnson, at his best, he is a guy who doesn't go for a lot of runs and he takes wickets," Ponting said about Johnson before following with a rider: "'if he's not at his best, we know he can leak a few runs.''
Johnson had a miserable summer during the Ashes barring at Perth where he snared six first-innings wickets with unplayable swing bowling to help level the series. But then one swallow doesn't make the summer and Johnson was ineffective for the remainder of the Test series. He found some late form at the back-end of the seven-match ODI series with a tally of 6 wickets at 23 from four matches.
Today Johnson partially acknowledged that he had endured more bad days than good, which was hurting him. "I've never felt too far away from being at my best but for me it just gets highlighted a lot more if I'm having a bad performance. I probably need to bring my performances closer together - have that sort of middle ground. At the moment it's either really good or not as good," he said.
Yet there is some positive news for him. Though he is yet to play in Sri Lanka, in India and Bangladesh Johnson has 31 wickets at 23.97 in 18 matches. Lee's 24 wickets across the three World Cup hosting countries has come at 31.54 from 21 matches. So even if Lee remains the leader of the pack, Johnson can take confidence from those numbers and hope to find the middle ground.
Nagraj Gollapudi is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
Feeds: Nagraj Gollapudi © ESPN EMEA Ltd.
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