So the ‘hard man’ of Australian cricket has finally called it a day. It is ironic that on the same day when Mitchell Johnson was struggling to intimidate batsmen at the WACA of all places, another left-arm quick bowler, Dirk Nannes, caused a local storm by decrying the time-honoured Australian ethos that sometimes makes hard cricket and verbal intimidation one and the same thing.

Nannes, commentating on ABC Grandstand, may well have been talking of the likes of Johnson when he referred to many of the Australian players being some of the nicest blokes in an individual sense but less than couth when driven along by the mob mentality. It’s hard to find any Australian with a harsh word to say about Johnson. The intimidation that he brought to the bowling crease (and sometimes with bat in hand) seems to have been very much a manufactured art form, at odds with his likeable persona off the field. As he struggled to kickstart the engine one last time to strike fear into the Kiwis, one begins to wonder if he was one of those fast bowlers who almost needed to get angry in order to find that extra 5%. In stark contrast to a Richard Hadlee, for example, whose style was all about control, precision and cold endeavour.