Support your favourite cricket team and cricketer

Mitchell Johnson" src="http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/b/5/e/7/58.jpg" alt="Mitchell Johnson" width="218" height="317" />Now that is what I term as a pitch that should warm the cockles of most pace bowlers, something that can almost be termed as an aberration in this day and age of flat batting tracks. The Kingsmead at Durban had seen over 300 runs scored on the first day for the loss of four wickets, but it came to life on the second and metamorphosed into a bowling wonder. Unused to such pace and bounce, only 187 runs were scored for the loss of 13 wickets on this second day, leaving the South Africans gasping for breath. And audience like yours truly, rubbing their hands in glee over the prospects of a more even third day’s play between the bat and ball.It had everything for the bowlers; pace, bounce and swing. But as J.P. Duminy showed, if one did put their head down and stuck it out, run making was not too difficult. Yet, the batsmen hopped, and jumped and batted as though they wanted to be put out of their misery. If australia lost their last six wickets for 23 runs, then south africa replied back by beginning with two in their very first over.However, worse was to follow for the hosts, as Mitchell Johnson fiery spell had Smith’s finger in splinters – which meant that he is out for two to three weeks – and then Jacques Kallis was smashed on his helmet that left him with some blood on his jersey and a handful of stitches on his face.It certainly was exciting to see the ball whiz past most of the batsmen’s ears, even when the ball had become slightly older. In fact, apart from Dumny, I quite liked the way Paul Harris handled the quick bowlers; every delivery from the one that pitched in the bowler’s half to the one that was up to the batsman, was played off the back foot without any attempt to score off it. With this limited technique and a not too batsmen-friendly pitch to boot, it was an achievement of sorts that Harris survived 46 deliveries before finally being done in by a perfect Andrew McDonald yorker.There must be a special word about Mitchell Johnson here. For more than one year now, Johnson has been carrying the workload of the Australian bowling department on his own, overshadowing even the more experienced brett lee and Stuart Clark. With both these out of equation, Johnson’s workload has expectedly doubled and yet, he continues to rule the roost. Today’s spell was exceptional though. Bowling with the venom of a bowler possessed, he had most batsmen in trouble; delivering couple of killer blows in the first over itself. And then, he almost killed the South Africans with a crunching snorter that broke the opposing finger into pieces.From here now, South Africa will need to do something similar to what india had done at Kolkata in 2001 or their ship runs the risk of going down very early in the series.