Oz batters Sri Lanka to clinch Test series

MELBOURNE: Mitchell Johnson says he always believed he could bounce back from a year out of Test cricket, after terrorizing Sri Lanka’s batsmen in a man-of-the-match performance in Australia’s series-clinching win yesterday.
The enigmatic left armer, scorned by England’s ‘Barmy Army’ fans for his wayward bowling in the 2010-11 Ashes series in Australia, battered the hapless Sri Lankans with intimidating bowling to spearhead Australia’s innings and 201-run victory.
He booked Sri Lanka’s elite batsman Kumar Sangakkara in for surgery on a tour-ending fractured finger and left wicketkeeper Prasanna Jayawardene with a hairline thumb fracture after blows on the gloves.
Johnson, who came back against South Africa in Perth last month after a year out, claimed six wickets and an unbeaten 92 in Australia’s huge 460 first innings.
He was the obvious man-of-the-match but even that might not be enough to ensure his selection in the Sydney Test dead rubber next week under Cricket Australia’s controversial pace bowling rotation policy.
Johnson always had the belief that he would play Test again after missing out following the second Test against South Africa in Johannesburg in November last year.
“I know we’ve got a lot of young talent out there and the guys have been playing very well, but I hadn’t watched a lot of cricket through my (foot) injury,” he said.
“I always believed in myself and having the time off it freshened me up mentally and physically.
“I never had any doubts that I could get back to the international level.
“I’m 31 now, I’ve been around the game a long time now and I think I’ve matured in the fact that I just have that belief in myself and just go out there and play my game and do the best job that I can.” Johnson was brutal in the Melbourne Test and said the team’s plan was to bowl short at the Sri Lankans and test them on the bouncing Melbourne Cricket Ground pitch.
“The boys went pretty hard at their batters with the short ball and they didn’t like it, the plan through this Test match was to get up their batters and unfortunately for them they got a few injuries out of it,” he said.
“I think that intimidation factor definitely worked out there today and we were able to keep on them and we bowled really well as a team throughout this whole Test match and beat them very well.” “I think that we found a bit of a weakness with them with the short ball on these wickets in Australia.
They obviously didn’t handle it as well as they liked.” Johnson has now taken 202 wickets in 49 Tests and he narrowly missed out on his second Test century when he was left stranded by his teammates in Australia’s sole innings.
But despite all this Johnson is still not guaranteed of playing in the Sydney Test.
“If Mitchell Johnson performed the way he did in this Test match it’s going to be very hard to leave him out. It’s trying to pick our best eleven for Sydney,” skipper and selector Michael Clarke said.
“Mitchell Starc will be definitely playing in Sydney.”