Mitchell Johnson probably knows that Kevin Pietersen has three lions tattooed on his left arm, though the three lions on KP’s England shirt, just above the ribcage, are what the bowler is eyeing. While there’s a long-standing tradition of the Australians’ leading fast bowler trying to rough up the opposition captain, this summer Johnson has identified Pietersen as his No 1 target.

Cranking up the verbal ante before the opening Test, Johnson reckons (for no obvious reason) that Pietersen is “under pressure. We’ve been talking about getting in a few nice ones right at the top of the badge. No-one likes that ball into the ribs so it’s definitely part of my plan to intimidate the guy”.

KP was never likely to let this go past his off stump without playing a shot and, true to form, he responded with a “bring it on, sonny, I can hardly wait” riposte. There’s already plenty to look forward to and the prospect of Johnson bowling short to England’s most belligerent, not to mention most cocksure, batsman ought to raise the entertainment level even more this summer.

The first batsman on whom Johnson inflicted pain, with a nasty blow on an unprotected head, actually prompted him to bowl spin for the rest of the innings. That was in his club cricket days. He’s not quite so squeamish any more. He twice broke bones in Graeme Smith’s hand against the South Africans last winter and, if he does score a bull’s-eye with Pietersen this summer, don’t expect him to revert to a long spell of sympathetic off-breaks.

“I’m not one for verbal confrontation particularly,” says Johnson, “but intimidation with the ball is part of my armoury and it’s something I’ve definitely taken into my game a bit more often. The key for me to taking wickets is to swing the ball, back into the right-hander, away to the left-hander, but you want to stamp your authority on a batsman, and yeah, there’ll be a few short ones coming down.”

Johnson, who was 12th man for every one of the five Tests in the 2006-07 series in Australia, has yet to play his first Ashes Test and says he’s never been more “pumped” for anything in his life. The England and Wales Cricket Board have done their best to deflate him by siting the first encounter in Cardiff, though he insists that won’t make him any less fired up.

“Mate, I honestly don’t care where it starts. I just want to get out there and play. But if you were to ask me where I’ve always dreamt of playing in an Ashes Test then, like most people, it would be Lord’s. I’ve never even been inside the pavilion or the Long Room, although I did see a Test there in 1999, when New Zealand were touring. I was 17 and had hardly travelled anywhere, so the whole thing was pretty exciting.”

A pivotal moment in 2005 was when Glenn McGrath missed the second Test after treading on a ball and turning his ankle. To suggest that Johnson is now as crucial to Australia’s pace attack as McGrath once was is not being fanciful. The Australians have a system of ranking their players and paying them accordingly. The only member of this squad on a more lucrative contract is the captain, Ricky Ponting.

Johnson’s burgeoning reputation does not surprise Dennis Lillee, who described the left-armer as a “once in a generation” cricketer after watching him bowl for less than five minutes as a 17-year-old and immediately urged the Australian cricket academy to enlist him. However, many of the following 10 years were such an injury-blighted struggle that Johnson’s wages once came from driving a plumber’s van rather than from spearheading his country’s sporting crusades. A series of stress fractures to the back left him without even a state contract, much less a national one, but he has now been injury-free for three years.

As a teenager, Johnson wasn’t sure whether he’d end up playing cricket or tennis. His boyhood dream of playing at Wimbledon foundered on his reluctance to leave Townsville in northern Queensland on a tennis scholarship to the state capital, Brisbane, at the age of 15. “Tennis ranked ahead of cricket at the time but I was a bit too shy and nervous to go to the big city by myself and eventually I lost interest. I’ve enjoyed Wimbledon, of course, but cricket is obviously why we’re here and we’ve been working pretty well flat out to make sure that we’re fired up and ready to go in Cardiff.”

Johnson is clearly not bothered that he’s touted (as is Pietersen for England) as the key player on the Australian side, otherwise he wouldn’t have dipped such a provocative toe into the verbal water. “Finding myself under the spotlight honestly doesn’t affect me,” he said. “You can listen to what you want and read what you want to but it doesn’t make you a better or worse player. You can’t control what other people say about you, so all the media interest hasn’t made me jittery or anything. There will be a few nerves when we finally get out on the field; this is the Ashes, after all. Even the guys who have been there and done it all before will be feeling a bit tense and wound up.”

His importance to Australia doesn’t stop with his bowling. His first cricketing hero was Brian Lara and Johnson’s right to be regarded as a serious allrounder was rubber- stamped in Australia’s most recent series in South Africa, when he was left stranded on 96 not out and then made a century two Tests later. And not just any old ton, either, as he took the South Africa bowlers apart with 11 fours and five sixes.

He clearly gives it a thump but in the not-too-distant future — when a hectic international schedule finally leaves him time to marry his karate expert fiancée, Jessica Bratich — he might not even be the fiercest hitter in his own household. “Being half- Yugoslav and half-Italian she’s pretty fiery,” said Johnson, “and she did hit me in the stomach once.” He grinned. “But only because I asked her to. I wanted to see if it hurt.” And did it? “Mmmm,” he said, “a lot.”

Did it, I asked, hurt as much as Australia being tipped out of the World Twenty20 in the first round?

“Well, it wasn’t ideal, obviously, and the dressing room was a pretty miserable place for about 24 hours after that. You don’t like to lose at anything but it really won’t have a bearing on what’s going to happen in the Test series. We bounced back from losing at home to South Africa to win the series over there and I expect us to bounce back from the Twenty20 thing as well.”

If that Test series in South Africa was the biggest in Johnson’s career so far, he’s had enough reminders from friends and family back home that the Ashes will be something else. “I’ve hardly had a conversation for months without it featuring high on the agenda and the hype has being going on over here for a long time, too, from what I can gather. Australia versus England at anything is always a big deal, something you grow up with from childhood. Watching on the TV, listening on the radio, the whole bit. It’s what a young kid dreams about, especially for a small-town boy from Queensland. I’ve never been so pumped up for anything in my life .”

Good lad. With Cricket Australia ordering their boys to be on their best behaviour, thank heavens for Johnson. And KP as well, for that matter. This is the Ashes, after all, and we’d hate it to be too polite.

- Mitchell Johnson was speaking to promote Sky Sports’ exclusively live and high-definition Ashes coverage, which starts on Wednesday