Image courtesy of: Zimbio
“He knows his game very well, and his accuracy is brilliant at the minute”
Australia fast bowling coach Craig McDermott has announced that he believes left-arm pace bowler Mitchell Johnson “is the best fast bowler in the world at the moment”.
McDermott’s claim can be backed up by the fact that Johnson ripped England apart with his 37 wickets at an average of 13.97 in the recent Ashes series.
“At Wanderers the other day he bowled a little bit better than he did in Australia, particularly with the late swing he’s getting here,” McDermott said. “The ball he bowled to Chris Rogers [on the Saturday] was something I’ve very rarely seen in my 35 years of cricket. It was going towards leg stump and knocked out his off stump. It swung unbelievably late.
“He bowled a number of balls like that the other day and. That’s good for us. It becomes difficult for right handers who want to leave the ball and left handers who think they’re going to just clip it off their pads.
“I think he probably is the best fast bowler in the world at the moment. He knows his game very well, and his accuracy is brilliant at the minute, it has been all summer. And he really understands where his wrist position is, with his alignment though the crease, he really believes himself so he’s the full package. On top of that, he’s a great bloke.”
McDermott also revealed that he and captain Michael Clarke have decided to allow Johnson to bowl short, attacking spells throughout the upcoming Test series against South Africa, which gets underway on February 12 in Centurion.
“If you’ve got someone bowling 150 that’s his best use,” McDermott said. “He’s got a real wow factor to his bowling from a pace point of view now and he bowled beautifully during the Australian summer. That’s always been the plan with Mitchell. We wanted to use him as our shock bowler. When you’ve got someone like that you don’t want him to bowl seven or eight over spells.
“You’ve got other blokes who are more drilled towards that. When you’ve got someone bowling 150 you didn’t see Malcolm Marshall and those sort of blokes bowling eight or nine over spells. You want to make sure he’s your shock bowler but he’s fit enough, if he’s on a roll, to bowl seven or eight over spells, so we’ve got the best of both worlds if it is required.”
Despite South Africa being renowned for its wicked pace and bounce, McDermott has called on the Australian pace attack to focus on their line and length.
“We’re going to have to get our lengths right. We’re going to have to be very full,” McDermott said. “It sounds like an old repeated saying of mine every time we start a new series about bowling full but it’s going to be really important to be very full here. We’ve got to get that right from ball one.
“I think the wicket will have some carry in it and we’ll have to bowl like we did in Australia. We’ll have to bowl very full and mix that up with some short-pitched bowling, with some aggressive bowling as well. The wicket’s going to be pretty Gabba-like I would have thought by the looks of it.
“We’ve got to get it right [if we bowl first]. We bowled first in Melbourne and we didn’t quite get it right in that first hour. We had an unbelievable Ashes series with the ball. We probably only bowled average for five or six hours out of the whole Ashes series. We have to make sure we get that down to one or two hours in this series and we’ll come up trumps.”