At the end of the week in which Mitchell Johnson has retired and Ian Bell seemingly been retired, the mind goes back to Cardiff in July.

It’s the fifth ball of the fourth over after tea on the third day. Crack! Bell’s cover-driven four, played on the up, sounds as good as it looks. Feels good, too. Feels important, and not only in the context of the match. Bell’s boundary ticks the score over to 170-3, effectively 292-3 after a first innings lead of 122, but there is a broader significance here.

This is Mitchell Johnson bowling, Mitchell Johnson who has just been creamed through the covers. And it’s Ian Bell doing the creaming. This is the final instalment of the 2013-2015 Ashes Trilogy, and a potted history will tell that these are the defining figures of the first two series – Bell serving up death by a thousand (late) cuts in the summer of 2013; Johnson’s weapons grade destruction the following winter.

Now, Bell and Joe Root have so far taken ten from Johnson’s over, taking his match figures to 35.5-4-160-0. Sure, this Cardiff wicket is slow, and Johnson has an ordinary record with the Dukes ball on English (and Welsh) wickets and in front of pitiless England fans. He may well, in the aftermath of the tragic death of Phil Hughes, also be reluctant to crank up the pace and the aggression. But if ever a cover-drive felt like an exorcism. Or maybe the whitewash never happened. Maybe Johnson’s 37 wickets at 13.97, taken every 30.5 balls were all a bad dream – a sun-drenched flashback to 2006/7.

Events out in the middle are mirroring that point in a day’s play when the crowd, booze taking its hold, begin to get a bit rowdy.

Miiiiiiiiiiiitchell, Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitchell.

The final ball of the over. What will be the response to the professional and personal insult of the preceding ball? He starts his deliberate, menacing approach to the crease, flexes like the Olympic javelin thrower that he surely could be, and … bowled him!

Suddenly, the ghost of Ashes past is back. Those who, moments earlier, were mocking him know it. And don’t those pockets of green and gold know it. English fears and Australian expectations could yet be realised this summer.

They’re not, as it goes, and Johnson rarely hits the heights of 2013/14. But he remains the most compelling player on either side, because the threat of those terrifying heights is never very far from the surface. Perhaps, too, because the depths of 2009 and 2010/11, so mercilessly mocked by the Barmy Army, are equally close to reemerging.

Has there ever been a wider gulf between a player’s best and worst output? Has there ever been a fast bowler with a mentality so at odds with his gift?

Now that he has retired, it occurs to me that Mitchell Johnson is the most compelling cricketer I have ever had the pleasure of seeing live. Being at the ground, away from the tyranny of the television director, eyes keep returning to those broad shoulders, equally capable of taking all that flak, bowling to the left, bowling to the right, and bowling at the speed of light.

I never even got to see him bowl particularly well, but that moment at Cardiff when Ian Bell’s stumps and English fan’s triumphalism were shattered will live long in the memory as a reminder of Mitchell Johnson’s thrilling, frustrating legacy.