JOHNSON_PROFILE_SEP1995

Johnson steps up as destiny calls again

By Charles Randall

JUST when things were becoming quiet, up pops Richard Johnson again, pulled into the England tour at the age of 20.

This is the same seam bowler who last year, in his first full season, had fame heaped on him for a week for dismissing Brian Lara at the wrong time.

A player few people had heard of calmly halted the huge bandwagon rolling behind the West Indian`s sequence of firstclass hundreds which, to many people`s dismay, did not reach six.

Johnson dismissed Lara again at Lord`s last season, bowling him in the Benson and Hedges Cup, and he followed that with less synthetic posterity, taking all 10 Derbyshire wickets.

They say Mike Atherton was a man who wore destiny on his sleeve, from a young age heading in one direction. John Crawley too. And now Johnson by a more direct route.

Johnson, who learnt much of his cricket at the Sunbury-on-Thames club in the Surrey League, is a classic case of The System producing something special via Middlesex under-11 and England agegroup into the County Championship, culminating with last winter`s England A tour to India, where injury restricted him embarrassingly to one first-class wicket.

His fast-medium pace and upright action hints at Angus Fraser, his Middlesex team-mate, and, as Ray Illingworth phrased it yesterday, he "hits the deck a fair bit".

He has a 6ft 2in build and strong legs, though there is still doubt about his fitness for South Africa. He needs specialist treatment on a back condition, which has kept him out of action since Aug 21.

Typically of so many seam bowlers, he has already experienced knee and shin-splint injuries, missing Middlesex`s first three matches.

He has a modest 36 championship victims to his name but no rival candidate has taken so many wickets so quickly

Johnson`s accuracy is an asset Atherton would be grateful for, and it will be interesting to see if his wicket-taking progresses as well as it has done at county level.

He has a modest 36 championship victims to his name but no rival candidate has taken so many wickets so quickly, only 223 overs, at so little cost, 16.55. Not even the skilful and experienced Tim Munton can match that strike rate.

He said yesterday: "After a slow start it has all fallen into place. I do not expect to be in the selectors` minds as a Test bowler at the beginning of the tour, but it`s a long trip and who knows what might happen?"

His 10 wickets on a sunny July afternoon last year on a good Derby batting strip marked him out as `special`, though on the day it could hardly have been lower key. Only when the last man fell did emotion take over.

That all-10 day suggested temperament would never be a problem for Johnson, which is more than could be said for at least two of his Middlesex colleagues.

Even his dismissal of Lara at Lord`s had a curiously work-a-day quality - caught attempting a glance down the leg side - that paid no homage to its historic significance.

Johnson has made the tour list. Destiny is racing along and can hardly go any quicker.

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