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MEMO: Barmy Army. Cop that.
Resurgent Australian quick Mitchell Johnson silenced his fiercest English detractors with a vicious second-session spell that turned the Gabba Test on its head on Friday.
For so long Australian cricket's true enigma, Johnson finally solved his own riddle and rendered England clueless as he honoured his pre-series pledge to be an Ashes force.
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The 32-year-old reprised his role as Australia's fast-bowling bully, taking 4-61 and claiming three wickets in 13 balls as the punchdrunk Poms (136) lost 6-9 in a disastrous middle session.
Johnson's first victim was Jonathan Trott (10) and when he removed Michael Carberry (40), Joe Root (2) and Graeme Swann (0) just before tea, Australia's standover man was re-born.
If cricket has a tale of redemption, this is it.
Exactly two years ago, Johnson lost the plot so dramatically he changed his bowling run-up midway through a Test against South Africa in Johannesburg.
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He finished with 2-168. A mess technically and physically, requiring toe surgery, he considered retirement.
He had already been through the wringer once before, left mentally battered by the Barmy Army brickbats that scorched Johnson's soul during his 2009 Ashes meltdown.
Yet here he is. Better for life's vicissitudes. Just as fast. Just as menacing. And now, alarmingly for England, mentally stronger for the dark days that taught Johnson to grasp every chance and bowl as if he's walking the (Baggy) Green Mile.
Mitchell Johnson lets fly. Source: Getty Images
Entering this Test, Johnson vowed he would no longer be a brain-frying conundrum. If the Barmy Army sledged him, he would give it back. After talking the talk, the left-arm speed merchant was duty-bound to walk the walk.
By stumps, his spikes trampled ruthlessly over an English top-order that surely thought it had seen the last of Johnson after he failed to appear in Australia's recent 3-0 Ashes loss.
Johnson started slowly yesterday and he can continue to tease, enchant, delight and frustrate ... all in the same spell. But it was another gamble, much like the one he took two years ago in Johannesburg, which proved a career-shaping moment.
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This time, the roll of the dice succeeded. Opting to go around the wicket, he rattled Carberry with two 145km/h thunderbolts before the English opener's edge to Shane Watson fuelled Johnson's fire.
The veteran of 209 Test wickets will never possess the metronomic consistency of Glenn McGrath but on his day Johnson sends the Richter scale soaring.
Perhaps he is best left raw and unspoiled.
As Australia's riddle, Mitchell Johnson's unpredictability is havoc enough to wipe out any (Barmy) Army.
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