The Australian cricket team after successfully retaining the Ashes, have inflicted more pain on Alastair’s England team by winning the Melbourne Test by 8 wickets. Oz have now gone 4-0 up in the series and a prospect of 5-0 seems likely.
The Australian cricket team after successfully retaining the Ashes, have inflicted more pain on Alastair’s England team by winning the Melbourne Test by 8 wickets. Oz have now gone 4-0 up in the series and a prospect of 5-0 seems likely.
Now the question is, why were the English batsmen so fragile? Were the Australian bowlers more intimidating? The answer to that would be ‘yes’. Enter in, left-arm pacer Mitchell Johnson – the major difference between the two sides with his aggressive short-pitched bowling, which resulted into the former claiming 31 wickets in the series at an average of 14.32.
When asked by reporters if the England batsmen were scared of him, Johnson replied, “I don’t know if it’s a scared thing, but maybe a bit uneasy at times on certain wickets throughout this series, definitely. Being a tail-ender myself, you never like going in there and facing short balls straight up. It can be intimidating.”
The 3rd Test saw an ‘improved performance’ by the English team in the 1st innings but a pumped up Mitchell Johnson and a clinical spell of Nathan Lyon brought the major downfall for the ‘Poms’.
Johnson has become the first Australian bowler to take 30 wickets or more in a series in Australia since their current Test bowling coach, Craig McDermott in 1994/95.
Former England captain, Nasser Hussain in his column wrote,”Even when Mitchell Johnson was blowing England away at the Gabba and the WACA it was understandable because it was fiery, old-fashioned proper fast bowling. But there were no excuses for England here.” Yes they are blown away!
