Johnson back to intimidate with word and deed

"Who said that?"

Mitchell Johnson is laughing even before he's heard the answer. The suggestion, from James Anderson no less, was that England and Australia might follow the nice-guys example set by Brendon McCullum's New Zealand and ease up on the sledging ahead of next week's first Investec Test in Cardiff.

His hoot of derision speaks with more volume than the most carefully crafted f-bomb ever could.

"That's interesting coming from him," Johnson says, pointing out Anderson's like of a sledge. "Because he's probably one of the biggest in the England team. Look, I don't think anything's going to change. I think he's just getting it out there to make himself look better."

Welcome to the Ashes 2015, a contest in which the holders have no intention whatsoever of altering the rules of engagement to suit their hosts' apparent immersion in the Spirit of Cricket. And frankly why would they?

If Michael Clarke's snarling edict to Anderson at Brisbane - "Get ready for a broken f****** arm" - remains the defining soundbite of the most savage Ashes contest of the decade, then Johnson's thunderbolts remain the most graphic illustration of the gulf that, first, emerged between the two teams, and then swallowed England whole.

Less than two years on, he needs only to walk into a room - or, in this case, take a seat in the sunshine on the patio of Australia's team hotel in Essex - to evoke an aura that only a handful of the most fearsome quick bowlers in history have attained.

Does he think that some of England's batsmen were uncomfortable facing him in the last Ashes?

"I dunno, you tell me," he grins.

A more damning response comes when he is reminded of one of the many flashpoints of that shock-and-awe series - his exchange of glares and clash of shoulders with the debutant Ben Stokes during England's first innings of the second Test at Adelaide.

"We spoke about him throughout that series because he was probably the only guy that really fought," says Johnson. "He's just playing the game and he's fiery and we like that. We like someone who's got a bit of guts and determination because it's nice to play against competitors."

If Stokes wasn't afraid of a word or two during that stoush then Johnson, with the pace of the possessed and a seriously bad-ass Movember tash adding to his Mephistophelian aura, had no qualms whatsoever about giving it back.

In fact, he seemed to grow stronger with every insult that came his way, just as he had visibly shrunk from the challenge on his earlier campaigns in 2009 and, most memorably, 2010-11, when the Barmy Army's refrain "he bowls to the left …" became the defining sound of England's 3-1 triumph.

"Do I like it? Who likes getting sledged every day?" Johnson jokes. "I love it. I've copped a bit down at fine leg during the warm-up game but I'm expecting a lot more than that," he says. "I've been able to experience that, I know what to expect from them now, so let them do their job and I'll do my job."

By his own admission, the pressure to do that job was simply too much in those first two series - not least in 2009 when he arrived at Hove for Australia's first warm-up as the most talked-about cricketer in the world, following his bone-shattering exploits against Graeme Smith's South Africans, but found, even before his first encounters with an Ashes-frenzied crowd, the business of speaking to the media a step into the unknown.

"Yeah, it did affect me in the past, 100%," he says. "I remember there was a big line-up of media, which was not something I'd expected at all. I came in and it blew me away, it pretty much started from there. But now I've been able to experience all that I'm a better player, a better person, and that's where I have to help these younger guys that haven't experienced that."

He's endured the dark side of such notoriety as well, not least at Melbourne during the 2010-11 series, when, he recalls, he was insulted on the street by a mob of ten Englishmen while out with his wife during the Boxing Day Test. That, he says, was a step too far, but by and large he welcomes the banter.

"It's just part of the game," he says. "They always seem to target certain players, that's been the history of Ashes cricket and cricket in general. But it's always nice to retaliate when you get wickets.

"They didn't give up when we won in Australia," he says. "They were still heckling me, even in Sydney. But they were trying to enjoy themselves while they were over there in a bad situation. They make the most of their trips, they pay their money and want to enjoy themselves. What I have noticed is there's probably a bit more appreciation when you do do well. But I'm not copping it when I'm walking down the street, which has happened in the past."

It's a mark both of Australia's fabled lack of sentimentality, as well as the impressive depths of their fast-bowling ranks, that Johnson went into last week's opening tour match against Kent at Canterbury with his place in the first Test still the subject of some debate.

With the young guns Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc inked in for Cardiff, and one of the two allrounders, Mitchell Marsh and Shane Watson, likely to join Nathan Lyon in a five-man attack, Johnson and the indestructible Ryan Harris are presumed to be competing for the one remaining berth.

However, a ferocious first-innings haul of 4 for 56 - at the end of which Rob Key, Kent's former captain, joked that there's "no way I get paid enough to be facing him" - surely put an end to the doubts about Johnson's role.

At the age of 33, he does not expect to be back for another Ashes campaign and says that, since being forced to miss last year's World Twenty20 with a toe injury, he has played every game as if it is his last. It's a state of mind that Australia would be foolish to squander. In good times and bad, Johnson's game has always inhabited the realm of the psychological but, with his place in Ashes folklore secure and his pace still red-hot, his karma could hardly be calmer.

"My pace felt like it had dropped off through the IPL, but I got here and really felt the mood," he says. "I'm excited about being here and playing and I've had some experience here now so it's up to me to help the young guys through. To know what's expected here in these conditions, and with the media, and the off-field stuff. That's more my job this time to help those guys through it.

"Personally and as a team, just to be able to win these Ashes over here in these conditions, where England play so well, there's nothing more pleasing than that. And, if I were to look into the future, this is probably my last Ashes series, so it would mean a lot to me to perform at my best, and the team to perform at their best, and us to win."

"There's healthy competition," he adds. "I've given myself every opportunity to play in that first Test, whether I do or I don't it's out of my hands now. If I'm not picked I'll be disappointed but make sure I'm ready to go for the next Test. We'll find out soon enough."

And for English survivors of the whitewash to end all whitewashes, that first team-sheet at Cardiff could be the most eagerly awaited of the year. Given how he made them wriggle 18 months ago, it would beggar belief for Australia to let England off the psychological hook that easily.