Ashes 2011 (9 page)

In the media box there was a great deal of record-delving. Parallel scorecards are few indeed. At their zenith in Melbourne in February 1912, England were 425 for one. It was while Australia were labouring in that Test match that a mannequin fell from an advertising blimp onto the outfield. 'Another bowler for you, Clem!' cried a wag in the crowd to the local captain, Hill. Ponting might have wished a similar intervention. Brisbane today turned on its most enervating weather of the Test match, the kind that has the shirt clinging to your back within minutes of moving outdoors, and after an hour or two becomes downright soporific. England's plan was clearly to weary the Australian bowlers ahead of the ensuing Adelaide Test, and the futility would have been as depleting as the physical exertion.

Strauss then declared at a mountainous 517 for one, hoping to take a few cheap wickets, and would have been disappointed that Collingwood dropped a catchable nick from Watson (17) from Swann's fifth ball. As it was, Strauss's counterpart made some golden hay, a crunching straight drive and a vintage pull shot from Finn's first two deliveries getting him under way, and a resounding maximum over mid-on from Swann speeding him to a forty-ball half-century.

Thus ended a Test match that seemed to last longer than its five days, so markedly was it divided between the first fifteen wickets falling for 403 and the last seven for 962, between the Australian ascendancy and the English – a draw, but one in which the register of redeeming features trended only one way.

Journalists at the Gabba today found relief amid the relentless accumulation of statistics by chortling over the story of a hapless woman in Westfield, Massachusetts, who because of her Twitter handle of @theashes has found herself trapped helplessly in online banter about the series, despite her protestations: 'I am not a freaking cricket match!!!' and 'What the hell is a wicket?'

The latter question has probably also crossed the mind of Mitchell Johnson, who for five days has found himself likewise ensnared with no hope of escape. And for all his effectiveness in the First Test – none for 170, a duck, a costly dropped catch – he might as well have been half a world away on the internet.

Like Longfellow's archer, who shot an arrow into the air that fell to earth he knew not where, Johnson seems only to have the foggiest notion where the ball is going any more – one arrow today fell to earth in the gutter at fine leg. Bowled round the wicket from wide on the crease, it was comfortably the worst Ashes wide since Steve Harmison's went down in infamy, and the most egregious Australian wide for twenty years before that, when Chris Matthews dramatically lost his bearings on the first morning of the Ashes in Brisbane – the last time, not coincidentally, Australia had a team as modest as this one.

Australian cricket has tried just about everything with Johnson. At first, in search of a ready-made replacement for Glenn McGrath, it promoted him to the hilt, entrusting him with the new ball and the role of new enforcer, with some success. In South Africa last year, he suddenly began bringing the ball back in to right-handers, late and at pace – the left-arm quick's version of the philosopher's stone.

Then it went awry, in a small way at Cardiff, and in a big, short, wide way at Lord's. 'I was surprised at how big the Ashes were in England,' he said later, explaining things so ingenuously as to deepen the puzzle. Some ascribed it to a low front arm; others blamed domestic tribulations; still others sensed a kind of friction between id and superego, with Johnson letting thought intrude on instinctual processes.

As a result, Australian cricket began hiding Johnson, or at least relieving him of some of his responsibilities, again with some success. One of the many quirks of Johnson's record is that he performs best as a second-change bowler, when he has obtained 33 wickets at 23, compared to 133 wickets at 32 the rest of the time. But this could only ever have been an interim measure: the whole point of Johnson, in an increasingly medium-paced country, is to bowl fast, for which he needs a new, hard, shiny ball.

So Australian cricket has recently begun vaunting him again. 'Our leading bowler for a long time and one of the leading bowlers in world cricket,' said chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch in announcing his inclusion for this Test. But leading them where? At the press conference before this game, Johnson talked up the idea of bombarding England's captain because … well, it sounded like because someone, a ventriloquising coach or an official, had told him this was a good idea. It was far more in character for Johnson when he began expanding on the detail of his tattoo, during which he drifted into a metrosexual reverie, leaving himself open to the urging that he spend less time worrying about what is on his arm and more on where it is pointing.

That would be unfair. Johnson is a hard-working cricketer, dedicated, team-oriented and formidably fit. Alone among Australia's attack for the last two years, he has kept himself on the park and ready for action at all times. And it is not his fault alone that when he is exposed at Test level, he is revealed full frontal. For there is one solution to the Johnson enigma that Australian cricket has not pursued, and that is actually letting Australian cricket sort him out as it does others and always has – by forcing him to work on his game at first-class level.

Johnson was spotted early, designated a 'once in a lifetime' bowler by Dennis Lillee, sent to the Academy, funnelled through the Centre of Excellence, introduced to international cricket at under-19 level and handled with gloves of the softest and most expensive kid throughout. At some stage in this process he ceased being Mitchell Johnson the cricketer and became the Mitchell Johnson Project – a kit of components with instructions, made to measure for the twenty-first century by a retinue of coaches and consultants to spare him the rigours of figuring the game out for himself.

In a country that prides itself on a Darwinian sporting culture, he has become a strange anomaly, Australia's most inexperienced experienced cricketer. In his thirtieth year, although he has earned thirty-eight Test caps, he has played only sixty-nine first-class games in all; at twenty-one, by comparison, Steve Finn has already played forty-eight.

His returns to domestic cricket are only ever brief and hardly ever indicative: he came into this game off a hundred and a five-for in Melbourne. But if the selectors crave consistency from him, why do they not let him find it, by playing interstate cricket for a prolonged period, and by solving the game according to his own lights?

The day at the Gabba ended with two unrelated announcements, the first that Qantas had offered the hapless Massachusetts tweeter a free trip to Australia in order to experience the game so perplexing her, and to answer her questions about what a wicket is. The second announcement was that while Australia's Gabba XI was being transferred intact to Adelaide, pace bowlers Ryan Harris and Doug Bollinger have been added to the squad. Mitchell Johnson's chances of rediscovering what a wicket is during the Second Test thereby narrowed quite sharply.

FIRST TEST
 
 
Brisbane Cricket Ground, Woolloongabba, Brisbane 25–29 November 2010

Toss
 
 
England
 
 
Match drawn