After seeing Mitchell Johnson's two monstrous balls on Thursday morning, I thought this series was over

After Johnson had removed Bairstow and Stokes with two terrifying deliveries, I switched off the TV...only to switch it back on after checking the score online an hour later through splayed fingers while holding my breath. (I was spared having to follow the same procedure during the latter stages of the second Australian innings yesterday morning, as I was driving to Brighton - I kept the radio off all the way. I didn't half enjoy the TV highlights on our return to London, though, watching them from start to finish no less than three times during the course of the evening.)

Despite England securing a great victory, I'll mainly remember this match for those two terrifying deliveries from Mitchell Johnson. Naturally, at the time, I was cursing Bairstow and Stokes for throwing their wickets away at such a vital stage of the game: in the heat of the moment, I may even have called their manliness into question. Ridiculous, of course, because when someone's hurling a rock-hard spherical object at your head at over 90 miles an hour before you've had time to get used to the conditions, well, who can blame anyone - even an international cricketer - for succumbing to the understandable instinct to fend the ball away from his face? (If I had to face one ball from Johnson - even if wearing a suit of armour with the visor down - I'd wet myself and burst into tears before promptly losing consciousness.) 

Mercifully, from all accounts, that was all Mitchell Johnson had to offer on Thursday: let's pray that's all he has to offer for the rest of this series, and that he suffers another of those bouts of dismal form which in the past earned him this heartfelt tribute from  England cricket supporters:

Now that England's best bowler is hors de combat for the next match - and possibly for the final test as well - and even with Starc and Hazlewood below par, we simply can't afford Johnson at his best. (Before this series, Glenn McGrath claimed that Australia possessed "the best bowling attack in the world." I wonder if that's still his considered opinion.) 

Test cricket is apparently in a state of transition from how it used to be played - with a run-rate of between two and two-and-a-half an over, and the best teams able to occupy the crease for two days to secure a valuable draw - to a 78 rpm, Comic Cuts version more like an extended T20 contest, where runs are routinely scored at over four an over and a side managing to last for a whole day on any but the deadest of wickets has become a rarity. A change was almost inevitable, given how poorly attended test matches are around the world - apart from the Ashes tests, which are often still standing-room-only affairs: I doubt very much if today's cricket fans, brought up on the instant gratification offered by crash-boom-bash slugfests would be willing to pay a small fortune to watch the likes of Boycott, Trevor Bailey or Chanderpaul occupy the crease for hours on end while the opposition clocks up endless maiden overs.

Whatever happens in the rest of this series, I think we have to welcome the England team's embrace of the new amphetamine style of not-so-long-form cricket. No doubt there will be some more depressing disasters like the one at Lord's along the way, and, of course, we'll all reserve the right to moan about the team when their new laissez-faire approach fails and to call for a return to the days when sides were capable of parking the bus for six sessions in a row - but I doubt if many of us would choose to forsake amphetamines for mogadon.