'I carry no mental scars'

 Australia fast bowler Mitchell Johnson has admitted the jibes he’d received from England fans during successive Ashes series defeats had dented his often fragile confidence. But the left-arm paceman insisted he carried no mental scars.

The taunts from the ‘Barmy Army’ became wounding with Johnson hearing repeated chants of: “He bowls to the left, he bowls to the right, that Mitchell Johnson, his bowling is shite. I think back then I let it affect me a lot,” Johnson said.

“It’s hard not to when that’s all you can hear in the cricket ground — your name being sung, and the songs are very catchy. At that point I was letting things get to me - it was not necessarily just the crowd, it was everything.”