The unbridled joy of Mitchell Johnson

Let’s start this with a few questions. Who is currently the fastest bowler in Test cricket? Who is the MVP of Test cricket, as of today? Who is Test cricket’s most intimidating and feared bowler? Which bowler crushes toes and cracks some skulls? Who is the best bowler in world cricket today?

If your answer isn’t Mitchell Johnson to each of these questions, you’re doing your cricket wrong.

Mitchell Johnson has become a phenomenon

My earliest memory of cricket dates back to the 1996 World Cup. Over the 14 years, what I have seen and come to learn is that cricket is a batsman’s game.

Yes, there have been the Akram and Younis shows, McGrath and Warne imposing themselves on the opposition, Murali weaving his web of spin all across the globe, the reverse swinging English – class of 2005, the sheer joy and pace of Lee, Akhtar and Bond, and more recently, Dale Steyn and Philander with their accuracy and swing.

But, the past 2 decades have been more about batsmen and their heroics. There would be 5 instances of a match winning, belligerent, commanding century to one instance of a bowler being all over the batsmen.

Over the last 6-7 years, the equation has become much more skewed. With the amount of cricket increasing manifold, injuries and exhaustion are huge concerns, and the bowlers have been compromising on their speed for accuracy and longevity.

The notion that pace and accuracy could go together was approaching extinction. 140kmph was considered express pace. The batsmen have been bullying and imposing themselves on these poor bowlers with better bats, shorter grounds and flatter pitches. And then, Mitchell Johnson happened.

The Mitchell Johnson effect has been the talk of the cricketing fraternity since late November last year. Over the course of 6 Tests, Mitch has gone from being a debatable selection for the Ashes to an absolute phenomenon.

It is not just about the hordes of wickets he has picked in these Tests. It is the demoralizing effect he has had on the opposition; he has bullied them into submission. He has mentally scarred the batsmen facing him, induced a sense of fear and has had them playing for survival, and not to score runs.

Australia were on a winless run of 9 Tests. Mitchell Johnson’s introduction has seen them rack up 6 wins in a row. Can’t be a mere coincidence, can it?

The English and South African batsmen had not quite faced anything like him in the last few years, and Mitch, with his thunderbolts, has left them fending against body blows and coping with fear and self-doubt.

In this kind of form, Johnson is almost becoming like the final frontier for a batsman to attain his cricketing “manhood”. Irrespective of what happens hereafter, irrespective of him being able to sustain his high levels of performances, Mitch’s performances in these Tests will be a part of cricketing folklore, akin to Sachin’s twin Sharjah knocks.

From a spectator’s point of view, watching Mitchell Johnson in his full pomp has become an experience in itself. As Russel Jackson, ever so aesthetically, put in his article for The Guardian -

“He’s also now an event himself, which is an astounding thing to achieve over the course of six Tests. It’s Mitch as appointment television. It’s Mitch as default headliner and Mitch as TV news bulletin place-setter.”

Purely on the basis of excitement for the spectators, Mitch is level with a Messi or Ronaldo show in football. There is an unrestrained joy and orgasmic pleasure in watching a tearaway fast bowler, ripping it up and having the batsmen hop all over the place. Mitch gives us just that. In wrestling parlance, Mitchell Johnson is the Main Event, and any batsman vs Mitch would be a squash match.

It has been long since any one bowler has caused such levels of destruction. A blend of skill, accuracy and intimidation has seen Johnson reach levels that have seldom been breached. 49 wickets in 6 Tests, at 13.4 with a strike rate of 27.1. I would confidently lay a wager that these numbers haven’t been achieved in international cricket for a long while.

My generation of cricket fans often hears about the good old days of cricket, where pace ruled the roost in the 1970s-80s. The West Indian speed merchants, the likes of Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee, etc. didn’t just have good numbers to show on their CVs, but were genuinely menacing pace bowlers, evoking the fear of damaged skulls as much as tumbling stumps.

I would like to believe that Mitchell Johnson is our answer to them. He is the closest we will get to that golden era of pace bowling. Keep racking and breaking them up, Mitch.