Johnson ready to bury Lord's memories

This time last year, Mitchell Johnson was approaching his nadir. He was on Australia's Ashes tour of England; his mother was in the tabloids back home, claiming Johnson had been "stolen" away from her by his fiancée. The stories were picked up in the London press, and it was an ugly episode that distracted Johnson from his role as the team's spearhead.

At Lord's, he bowled short and wide and was carved up by England's batsmen, and finished the match with 3 for 200. The crowds around the country got stuck in to him, he couldn't swing the ball, and nothing went right. Next week, he returns to Lord's to face Pakistan in a Test, almost a year to the day after he last wore the baggy green there, under nothing like the same intense scrutiny.

"Lord's was my lowest point, performance wise," Johnson said in Birmingham, where he was preparing for Monday's Twenty20 against Pakistan. "Even that, I look at the second innings and I started to feel a little better about my bowling. You look at the whole series and I was one of the leading wicket takers, I just wasn't really at my best.

"I'm definitely more relaxed this time. It's totally different to last time. I don't feel those pressures. My game, I feel, has improved a lot since last being here. I had that exposure of what it was like to be the new leader of the attack and getting all the media hype and what you were getting from the crowds as well."

On that front, Johnson is right. The Ashes this series is not, so the media hype will not follow him. And when the return contest comes later this year, Johnson will have the local fans behind him. Even so, he feels he has learnt from his last trip to England, and his focus was tested again earlier this year in New Zealand, when he clashed heads with Scott Styris in an ODI in Napier.

"In New Zealand I copped a fair bit as well from their crowds, with the incident that happened over there with Scott Styris," Johnson said. "I copped a fair bit over there after that, but I showed that I can pull my head together and just go out there and play cricket and not let the emotions get to me. I've pretty much shown that I have improved."

His focus is one thing, but Johnson must also find a way to master the English conditions. He finished the Ashes tour with 20 wickets at 32.55 - not a bad analysis, but one that flattered him a little. Part of the problem at Lord's was the unusual slope, which Johnson had been warned about but which caused him all sorts of trouble, while he also found the English surfaces slower and softer under his feet.

Against Pakistan at Lord's and Headingley, Johnson will be Ricky Ponting's go-to man in a pace attack likely to feature Doug Bollinger and Ben Hilfenhaus. He doesn't view the series so much as a second chance in England as an opportunity to fine-tune his game, which has improved dramatically since last July - he has taken 41 Test wickets at 25.90 since the start of the Australian summer.

"I did find Lord's quite different, quite a hard place to bowl because of the slope in it," Johnson said. "It's something that I was warned about, speaking to past players and [Australia's bowling coach] Troy Cooley, who has been over here as the England bowling coach. It was a pretty good experience for me.

"I haven't played county cricket before, and it's always a good experience coming over here and playing on different kinds of wickets. Whether it's a second chance or not - I'm not looking at it that way. I just want to go out there and do my best again. Hopefully we can start off with these Twenty20s and then work into the Test matches, which I'm really looking forward to."

Monday's Twenty20 will be Johnson's first match back after missing the ODI series against England due to an infection in his right elbow. He had a tattoo on the arm ahead of the World Twenty20 and there has been speculation the two could be linked, but Johnson isn't convinced that his artwork had anything to do with his soreness.

"I wouldn't have thought so," he said. "I got the tattoo three weeks before I travelled away, so that ruled that out. I got to the West Indies and I felt like I knocked it on the plane, but I'm not 100% sure. It started off as a little bursa, a little sac of fluid, and then progressed from there. We're not really 100% sure how it came and got infected. At the moment it's feeling very good."

So is the rest of Johnson. What a difference a year makes.