English cricket fans have stopped laughing at Mitchell Johnson.  The Australian paceman with the horseshoe mustache has gone from goat to giant in the space of the first two Ashes test matches, taking his team to the verge of reclaiming the trophy that it lost four years ago. If Australia wins the third test, which starts Friday in Perth, it will regain the Ashes with two matches to go in the series.  There was a sense, even as England won 3-0 at home in the first Ashes earlier this year, that the teams were not that far apart. But few anticipated the extent of the Australian resurgence. Wins by 381 runs and 218 runs show the balance between the teams has not just shifted, it has been inverted.  The cast of players remains largely the same from the series in England. So what happened? Glenn McGrath, one of Australiaâs greatest fast bowlers, puts it down to Johnson.  âThe hostile fashion in which he is bowling, the way he has swarmed all over the England batting lineup and unsettled them, has lifted Australia,â McGrath wrote in The Guardian. âHeâs the big difference between this series and the one in the English summer.â  Johnson was named the man of the match in each of the first two tests. He took 17 of the 40 English wickets to fall at an average of fewer than 13 runs apiece. His seven wickets for 40 runs in the first innings of the second test in Adelaide was the best by a left-arm paceman in the 136-year history of the rivalry. His batting also helped rescue Australia from a slow start in the first test at Brisbane.  On the way to reclaiming the Ashes, he has resuscitated his own career.  Johnson looked like a player with his best days behind him when left off the test squad for its trip to England earlier this year. He was 31, had a mediocre record against England and had missed much of the last two years with injuries to his back and feet.  There were great moments in his past. As a teenager he was hailed by Dennis Lillee, perhaps Australiaâs best-ever paceman, as a âonce-in-a-generation bowler.â He was briefly ranked the worldâs second-best bowler after devastating spells against South Africa in 2009.  But then there was his wildness, which prompted laughs, taunts and derisive songs from opposing fans with the line: âHe bowls to the left, he bowls to the right.â His actions also baffled the former Australia captain Ricky Ponting.  In his book, Ponting rated Johnson âas lethal a bowler as any in my experience,â while lamenting that âfor someone so talented, such a natural cricketer and so gifted an athlete, I found his lack of self-belief astounding.â Other critics cited Johnsonâs bowling action â an eccentric motion incorporating a low arm and a distinct pause â as too unorthodox. But at his best, he commanded the gameâs most feared weapon: pure, raw speed.  âGenuine fast bowling can change a game or a series quicker than any other skill in cricket,â the former Australian captain Ian Chappell wrote on the website ESPN Cricinfo after Australiaâs victory in Brisbane.  âI was genuinely nervous at the start of the series, hadnât played a test in a long while, and what England had done to me in the past was on my mind,â admitted Johnson, who said he was âable to push that aside and bowl the way I wanted to bowl.â  âHeâs a quality performer,â said Ian Bell, the Englishman who has done the best against Johnson. âWhen heâs doing it at 150 k.p.h.,â or about 93 miles per hour, âyouâve got to be switched on every ball.â  âI like the fact that being a fast bowler you can be intimidating,â Johnson said this week, relishing his newfound scariness.  Australiaâs other pacemen, Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle, have also bowled well. Siddle has dominated the dangerous English strokeplayer Kevin Pietersen. Much of Johnsonâs 17-wicket haul was harvested against Englandâs middle and bottom of the order, negating a recent English strength. And Johnson also struck lethal early blows in each England innings at Adelaide by cheaply dismissing its captain, Alastair Cook.  So Cook goes into his 100th test at Perth worried not only about his team trailing 2-0 â a margin no England team has ever recovered from against Australia â but about his own batting form. Australiaâs captain, Michael Clarke, is also playing his 100th test and will be buoyed by those victories and his own scores of 100-plus in each match.  âOnce a genuine fast bowler stamps his authority on a series, the mental damage can carry over even on the most benign bowling surfaces,â Chappell wrote after the first test. Johnson has been anything but benign against England in Perth, his home ground. Two years ago, he single-handedly demolished England in a series it otherwise dominated.  If Johnson keeps up his form, the current series could be settled before Christmas. Whoâs laughing now?
Mitchell Johnson, who has been taunted by cricket fans for his lack of control in the past, has led Australia to a 2-0 lead in the Ashes with something no one can teach: raw speed.