We continue our countdown of the best Test bowling performances on Australian soil since 2000
Top 20 in 2020: The best Test bowling, No.5
We've already counted down the 20 best Test moments and 20 best Test batting performances so far this century, and now it’s the turn of the bowlers!
The same criteria applies; performances have to be from Test matches since 2000 on Australian soil, with extra weight given to those that have come in famous victories for a bowler's team.
Before you get into this countdown, make sure you take a look at our Top 20 batting and Top 20 moments from earlier this year.
Re-live the countdown in full: 20-18 | 17-15 | 14-12 | 11-9 | 8-6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1
5) Mitchell Johnson, 4-61 & 5-42
Australia v England, Brisbane, 2013
Image Id: F28A661A4BBC4C22B8D26615891F563FMitchell Johnson was lolling in Brisbane's late-spring sunshine when the vision for his imminent Ashes assault – a campaign that would rebuild his character and redefine his career – crystallised before him.
Recalled to Australia's team for what the then 32-year-old understood was his final shot at Test cricket, he sprawled on a grass bank at Allan Border Field with fellow fast bowlers Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle.
It was just days before the first Test against England at the Gabba, and the trio had spent the preceding week practicing, plotting and pining to wrest back the urn that had remained in the old enemy's grip for close to the past five years.
But it was not until the quicks were joined by captain Michael Clarke, and the bowling strategy for the upcoming five Tests laid bare, that Johnson sensed this was his time.
The plan, as outlined by the skipper, was simple and succinct.
Johnson would bowl at top speed and intimidate England's batters – especially their tailenders – operating in short spells of three or four overs.
With rival batters thus pinned to the crease, Harris would use deft swing and nagging accuracy to tempt them into error while Siddle's thanklessly essential task was to bowl 'dry' for lengthy stints and ensure pressure rarely relented.
It was sweet music to Johnson, who had missed the preceding Ashes series in the UK and used that hiatus to resolve that if he'd already crossed the peak of his playing days, he might as well descend at full throttle.
"I just had to wang it down as fast as I could. It was a plan I was happy to follow," he would recall.
The planets therefore aligned when Clarke released the handbrake, with his faith in Johnson's capacity to silence critics along with his own self-doubts aired in the days before the Brisbane Test.
Image Id: BC502C3FE41E4A0FB128EC97B3BC5923"It wouldn't surprise me if in a couple of months' time you see Mitch being named man of the series," Clarke boldly ventured.
Despite Johnson's absence from Australia's 2013 Ashes defeat, Clarke's confidence emanated from recent ODI outings in which the occasionally wayward quick landed some telling blows.
While the pace he generated on batter-friendly pitches during a six-game runs-fest in India shortly before the home Ashes campaign was notable, it was the impact on England's batting bulwark Jonathan Trott earlier in the year that was of most strategic importance.
Trott was England's second-highest scorer in their 2010-11 Ashes triumph down under but appeared flummoxed by Johnson's short-pitched strategy in the ODI series that followed the 2013 Ashes, leading Australia to believe they had found a weak point.
Nonetheless, Johnson conceded he felt "a nervous wreck" as he stood atop his bowling mark before England's first innings at the Gabba.
He had second-top scored in Australia's barely par total of 295, but never subscribed to the spurious theory he invariably bowled well in the wake of batting success.
His initial three-over spell yielded good pace but limited control, and with 0-15 to his name the whispers of doubt that percolated through the Gabba also found voice in Johnson's mind.
Harris snared the first breakthrough shortly before lunch on day two and, as Trott walked to the Gabba's stifling centre, Johnson readied for an immediate return to the bowling crease.
"He's my man," Johnson wrote in his autobiography 'Resilient', citing the scars that England's number three carried from their earlier ODI stoush.
"We’ve heard he is facing left-armers and practicing against the short ball, so I know he is sweating on me."
It wasn't until the third over of his second spell that Johnson got a crack at Trott, but it was instantly apparent the batter's intensive remedial work hadn't resolved his shortcomings and Clarke duly hustled fielders into place to allow his strike weapon a fourth over on the stroke of lunch.
Johnson's first thunderbolt was short, and seemingly too far down leg side to prevent the right-hander safely swaying inside the line.
But Trott's capacity to withstand this type of assault had become so compromised that he wafted needlessly as he lurched across his stumps and appeared almost relieved when adjudged caught behind.
Johnson would acknowledge it was far from his best ball, and that his quarry was ostensibly a beaten man even before he delivered it.
But it validated Australia's Ashes game plan, and filled their uncertain quick with such self-belief the series was conceivably decided by that single strike landed moments before lunch on day two of the Test summer.
"Those few seconds change everything," Johnson would later reflect.
Image Id: 03E6EFA4EBEF42C4A784C0946A496479Returning for a third spell midway through that day, Johnson shifted his attack on left-hand opener Michael Carberry to around the wicket and enjoyed immediate success as England plunged into disarray.
In his next over, Johnson had leaden-footed Joe Root caught at third slip and then used the Trott ploy to fire out Graeme Swann.
Coursing with adrenaline and with a baying Brisbane crowd drowning out the Barmy Army jibes he had long suffered, Johnson sent down eight consecutive overs either side of tea from which he claimed 3-19 as England lost 6-9 at the height of his rampage.
His second innings was even more devastating.
Australia declared 560 runs ahead an hour before stumps on day three, and Johnson needed just seven deliveries at Trott to send him back to the sheds (and out of the series, as it transpired) in brutally predictable fashion.
The menace that Johnson posed England in their first innings had morphed into collective dread.
"He was in our heads even when he wasn't bowling," Kevin Pietersen wrote in his memoir KP, in which he revealed England's tail-end batters were "scared" of their unrelenting tormentor.
"It was clear that Johnson was already a weapon that we had no answer to."
Pietersen succumbed to the leg-side trap and, following a mid-afternoon hailstorm, Stuart Broad and Swann fell to consecutive deliveries before James Anderson parried another spiteful short ball to complete Johnson's first Test five-for in almost three years.
His 9-103 earned player-of-the-match honours in Australia's 381-run win, but of greater importance was the fear he had instilled in England’s batters and the emboldened feeling he took from Brisbane into the final phase of his career.
"Maybe, just maybe, this Ashes is going to be one where I live up to the expectations that were placed on me when I was discovered nearly 15 years before," Johnson remembered thinking in the wake of that decisive performance.
He would be proved memorably, frighteningly correct.
Top 20 in 2020: Best Test bowling
20) James Pattinson v New Zealand, Brisbane, 2011
19) Glenn McGrath v England, Brisbane, 2006
18) Anil Kumble v Australia, Sydney, 2004
17) Mohammad Asif v Australia, Sydney, 2010
16) Peter Siddle v England, Brisbane, 2010
15) Rene Farrell v England, Sydney, 2011
14) Glenn McGrath v Pakistan, Perth, 2004
13) Jasprit Bumrah v Australia, Melbourne, 2018
12) Michael Clarke v India, Sydney, 2008
11) Mitchell Johnson v South Africa, Perth, 2008
10) Vernon Philander v Australia, Hobart, 2016
9) Glenn McGrath v West Indies, Brisbane, 2000
8) Mitchell Johnson v England, Perth, 2010
7) Doug Bracewell v Australia, Hobart, 2011
6) Ajit Agarkar v Australia, Adelaide, 2003
5) Mitchell Johnson v England, Brisbane, 2013
4) Shane Warne v England, Adelaide, 2006
3) Dale Steyn v Australia, Melbourne, 2008
2) Nathan Lyon v India, Adelaide, 2014
1) Mitchell Johnson v England, Adelaide, 2013