Fear and loathing in London

Quick Single: The road back from India revisited 

The saga that followed the now infamous ‘homework’ episode was not the first occasion that Mitchell Johnson had been forced to stare into the abyss and fashion a path back from its edge.

There was losing his place in the Queensland team and then his state contract in 2003, as he was continually beset by back problems, the perennial curse of the young fast bowler, and consigned to playing club cricket in Brisbane as a specialist batsman.

There was the toe injury sustained in South Africa in 2011 that led to the discovery of a metal shard embedded deep beneath the skin, followed by surgery and 12 months away from the game.

Immediately after that procedure he was unsure if he maintained the ability or the will to return to international cricket, but two months into his rehabilitation the hunger to play the game he had pursued at the expense of his considerable junior tennis acumen returned.

He believed at barely 30 his best playing days were ahead of him and he didn’t want to carry that regret into retirement.

Then there was the very public unravelling of his on-field performances and his off-field pressures during the 2009 Ashes series in England, when he was subjected to damning media critiques and even more merciless skewering from the mocking English crowds.

It led Ricky Ponting to note in his recent autobiography: “I never questioned his (Johnson’s) work ethic and commitment, but for someone so talented, such a natural cricketer and so gifted an athlete, I found his lack of self-belief astonishing.”

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When asked if he felt that assessment from his former teammate and skipper was accurate and fair, Johnson winces slightly, crosses his heavily-muscled arms over his chest and – after a moment’s pause – responds: “Yeah, definitely.”

“At that point of the (2009) Ashes in England it was pretty bad,” he goes on, squinting slightly into a cloudless Perth morning.

“It was really bad (in the second Test) at Lord’s. I was thinking about everything.

“My confidence had gone, I had stuff going on personally that I didn’t know how to handle, and so I just didn’t handle it through the whole series.

“To make it worse, I was thinking about my bowling technique when I was out there playing because the ball was going all over the place.

“I was trying to self-correct, which you just can’t do during the course of a Test match.

“Then there was Lord’s itself with the slope (of the playing surface), and I was thinking, “How do I deal with this, do I have to change something to get it on the right part of the wicket?’

“On top of that there was the crowd – I was starting to think about what people in the crowd were saying.

“And the media, I was starting to think about what they were writing and starting to believe everything I was hearing.

“I just had no focus at all.

“So that when I did play a good game – like I did at Headingley in the fourth Test, where I got five-for – I just accepted it was a bit of a fluke.

“But I couldn’t work out why I was going up and down all the time.

“Up until then (he was later named the ICC’s 2009  Player of the Year) everything had been going well, and because I didn’t know why it was going well I sort of relaxed a little bit and thought it would keep happening.

“I made a big mistake there. But that’s the game and I’ve learned that now.”

That learning process included investing as much, if not more time and effort into galvanising his mental strength as he put into honing his chiselled physique for the relentless demands of fast bowling.

He enlisted at North Fremantle’s almost masonic Mill Gym, run by ex-SAS service folk for those who believe boot-camp style deprivation training errs a little on the soft side.

In the process he befriended Ben Roberts-Smith, who in 2010 received the Victoria Cross for valour during the conflict in Afghanistan and who has proved an invaluable source of inspiration as well as perspective.

While at pains to dismiss any comparison between the life and death demands of a soldier on active duty in a combat zone and the stresses of hurling or hitting a 156-gram leather encased cricket ball for a living, Johnson was eager to learn as much as he could from his decorated mentor.

“I was able to have a couple of lunches with him and go and see him train as well as do some training with him, and through that just get a bit of an idea of mental strength,” he said.

“But it came down to me in the end.

“Wanting to get back, wanting to improve and I was definitely quite nervous coming back (to Test cricket) because I had been through so much and I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like when I started.”

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The support, inspiration and direction provided by his wife, Jessica, has also been integral and he is in no doubt as to the impact the arrival of their daughter, Rubika, in late 2012 has brought with it even greater maturity and serenity.

Even if she steadfastly refuses to recognise the menace of her dad’s gringo moustache, which became the impromptu trademark of his Ashes rampage.

“I think she likes it, because I tickle her with it on her back – she gets really ticklish and then she’ll try and pull it,” Johnson said, unable to keep from smiling.

“I did shave it off a while ago and she gave me a bit of a funny look when she first saw it.

“But the great thing is she doesn’t know and doesn’t care, although she does cheer for me – Jess has got her to say ‘go Dad, go’ and she recognises me on the tele and if I’m in the paper.

“So that’s really cool.”