England have no answer to Mitchell Johnson terror

Mitchell Johnson appears to have lost his fear of playing England while their apprehension of him looks to be growing, after a searing spell of fast bowling at the Gabba put Australia in charge of the first Ashes Test.

Johnson bowled fast and furious to take four for 61, a performance that does not bode well for England's chances of retaining the Ashes should he manage to sustain it. Johnson was the top wicket-taker in the innings but his ability to bowl at more than 90mph clearly unsettled England's batsmen, who at one stage lost six wickets for nine runs in a horrific 54-minute period after lunch.

When teams lose wickets to sheer pace like Johnson's, the contagion is difficult to stop. Australia once lost seven wickets for 29 runs against the West Indies in Perth after Dean Jones had riled Curtly Ambrose by asking the umpire to get him to remove his white wristbands.

Ambrose responded with match figures of seven for 25 to stun Australia, something Johnson did not manage here even though some of England's batsmen looked visibly shaken after he had roughed them up with the bouncer. It was an abject performance but one not unusual for England in the first Test of an overseas series.

For some reason, and team director Andy Flower claims to have addressed this with English cricket's finest minds, the batting tends to fail spectacularly, something it did in Dunedin earlier this year against New Zealand and in Dubai a few years ago against Pakistan. Discounting Bangladesh, you have to go all the way back to 2004 to find when England last won their opening Test overseas. In the past against England it has usually been Johnson who has been found wanting.

His often wayward bowling has been the butt of at least one song by the Barmy Army while another has dissected the allegedly awkward relationship between his partner and his mother. His penchant for tattoos caused some to question whether they were an outward manifestation of a sensitive soul trying to be more macho for the day job. If true, it fell flat when he admitted that negative chants from the crowd affected him.

A magnificent athlete, Johnson has always possessed the ability to bowl fast, if not straight. But recent work with Dennis Lillee, arguably Australia's finest fast bowler, appears to have transformed that part of his game as well as helping him to stay mentally strong. Johnson made some big claims coming into the series, the kind England players of the past used to associate with a confident and consistent performer like Glenn McGrath rather than a sensitive soul like him.

His feeding frenzy here began with Jonathan Trott, against whom he adopted a sort of Bodyline, targeting Trott's left shoulder as he had done in the recent one-day series in England. Johnson has been predicting how he might get Trott out in the newspapers, but the batsman could have prevented it happening had he wasted enough time between overs for the umpires to call lunch. Instead, with the clock indicating one minute past noon (they take lunch early in Queensland), he flicked at another short ball and was caught down the leg side by Brad Haddin, the main architect of Australia's first-innings 295 with a score of 94.

A decent contest between Johnson and Kevin Pietersen, playing his 100th Test, ensued after lunch. But it was not until Pietersen had been frustrated out by Ryan Harris for 18 that the full force of Johnson's aggressive pace was felt. Bowling in tandem with spinner Nathan Lyon, he dismissed the watchful Michael Carberry with a sequence of classic bowling delivered from around the wicket. A bouncer that Carberry almost popped into short leg's hands was followed by another that singed his streamlined helmet. This was followed by one further up in the nick zone that Carberry was caught in two minds over playing.

When you have two fifths of a second to make that decision it is often too late to demure and Carberry edged the ball to Shane Watson at first slip. Resuming his Test career after three and half years, Carberry top-scored for England with 40 and looked commendably solid. But it was him lying doggo against Lyon - off whom Carberry did not take a single run - that put pressure on Pietersen.

Lyon then had Ian Bell and Matt Prior caught at short leg off successive balls to put him on a hat-trick, a collapse Johnson added his wrecking ball to by getting rid of Joe Root and Graeme Swann in successive overs. The Gabba used to be Johnson's home ground before he decamped to Perth and the WACA, where the third Test is played.

England's batsmen need to find a solution to him before then, as he could be terrifying there. Three hundreds by England's top three nullified him at the Gabba three years ago but if that is to happen again, England need to be more robust against his modern form of Bodyline and keep him at bay.