Australia's Mitchell Johnson is ready to make Kevin Pietersen and his England team-mates pay for their "cocky" comments.
Pace ace fired up by comments
Australia's Mitchell Johnson is ready to make Kevin Pietersen and his England team-mates pay for their "cocky" comments.
England go into the Ashes series full of confidence after regaining the famous urn last time out and started their tour Down Under with a win.
However Mitchell claims some of the comments from the England camp following the victory over Western Australia had raised eyebrows.
"They're talking probably a lot more than I noticed before the last series," said Johnson.
"Whether they're being cocky or not, that's maybe a confidence thing with them. They've been playing well for probably 18 months.
"Good luck to them and if they want to throw around a few words, then that's fine, but we're just going to focus on our game."
Pietersen had claimed he is "on fire" following knocks of 58 and 35 not out against the Warriors - and Mitchell is ready to test those words.
"I did hear him say that he was on fire - that was about all I heard," Johnson said.
"But talking about cocky comments... that's probably one of them. It's just how Pietersen is - it's what gets him going.
Focus
"But if we go out there and focus on what we need to do... we will win this series - that's the plan, and do it in front of a home crowd and hopefully put a few of those comments away."
Although Pietersen will be a natural target for Australia's attack, Mitchell insists he and his colleagues will be going after openers Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook.
"If we can go after their captain, Strauss, I think if you can get him early at the top order, (it will) hopefully put a lot of pressure on their lower/middle order," Johnson said.
"Being the captain, I think they've really looked up to him in the last 18 months, especially after beating us at their home.
"If we can put a lot of pressure on him, then hopefully they can crumble a little bit.
"We saw that the last Ashes, Cook was probably a bit of a weak link for them. But you never know, he can come out here and score plenty of runs.
"I don't want to say that he's the weak link, (but) there will definitely be a lot of pressure on him - that's for sure."
