Fearsome day of fast bowling from Mitchell Johnson among the fiercest in cricket history 5Mitchell Johnson celebrates his sixth wicket of the day on Saturday. IF Bodyline villain Harold Larwood was any scarier than the new model Mitchell Johnson he must have been some bowler. As far as rampant, raw, blood-on-the-floor fast bowling spells to middle and lower order batsman go Johnson's 7-40 against England is as good as it gets. Even sitting in the press box you felt as if you were going to get blown off your chair. Coach Darren Lehmann had vowed to take Australia back to its glory years and suddenly, there we were. You don't see it often - a highly rated cricket team in a state of uncontrollable panic against a single fast bowler on a flat wicket. Larwood, Frank Tyson and John Snow stitched up Australia with spells like this and Australia got their own back with Lillee and Thomson in the 1970s and Gregory And McDonald in the 1920s. But that's five bliztreig eras in 100 years. Every team collapses from time to time but cricket fans can go for decades without seeing the sort of mayhem that unfolded in Adelaide on Saturday. Some will say that Johnson has had this type of season in him from the time he was first spotted when speed guns were introduced into Australian cricket a dozen years ago. Queensland officials sent a man with the gun around the state and he came back to tell them that Queensland's fastest bowler was not one of their internationals but an unknown teenage kid from Townsville who was bowling in his father's golf spikes. But his journey to Saturday has been a long one, full of pitfalls and self-doubts, a challenging upbringing, injuries and confidence losses. Finally every piece in the jigsaw has been put in its place. Former Wisden editor Scyld Berry said Johnson's spell would have its own place in history. "It took fast bowling back to the glory days of the 1980s when the West Indies were at their peak," he said. What makes Johnson different is that he is a left-armer with that awkward angle. I don't think we have seen a left-armer bowl as quickly as he has. In our ever-sanitised world of short boundaries, flat wickets, heavy bats and bouncer rules it is an extremely rare experience to see batsmen almost shaking in their boots, playing silly nerve-wracked shots, taking reckless runs to get off strike, poking at balls that should be left alone, jumping across their stumps to be bowled behind their legs. And it was not as if Johnson did it on a Perth trampoline. This was an Adelaide Oval featherbed. Not that he needed much help because volcanic pace is its own weapon. Mitchell Johnson celebrates the wicket of Matt Prior for a duck. Photo: James Elsby Source: AP A measure of his worth was what happened at the other end - basically nothing. When Johnson was bowling after lunch it was as if a tsunami was sweeping the ground. Between his overs it was more like the type of waves you'd see in a children's wading pool. When Johnson finished his spell after twice bowling for a hat-trick the Adelaide Oval felt like a country town after a violent storm had passed and all you heard was the occasional bird call. At the end of the English innings, when Johnson had taken 7-40, the returns of all other bowlers for the match were 13-680, confirming that one man had soared spectacularly above his team-mates and rivals. But you did not have to be a statistician to accept you were watching something truly special.