Matthew Hayden's zeal inspired Mitchell Johnson's Australia dreams

Mitchell Johnson, one of the most feared fast bowlers from Australia, has revealed that Matthew Hayden's zeal to strive hard inspired him to put in extra efforts to fulfil his Test dreams.

"I remember Matthew Hayden, when I was playing for Queensland. We were in the net session for three hours. It was humid like Mumbai. (After the net session), I was stretching and I watched Hayden walk to the end (of) nets, which had a bowling machine, and hitting ball after ball," recalled Johnson at a promotional event here. "It made me think 'what is he (Hayden) doing. We just had a massive training session, (so) why is he hitting more balls.' That did not make sense to me, (but) after some time it clicked that he plays for Australia. And I found out that he was doing extra running and extra training session as well." PTI quoted Johnson as saying.

"That really opened my eyes and made me think, (if) I wanna (want to) play for Australia, you are going to do that extra stuff," recalled Johnson, who ended his Test career with a haul of 313 wickets from 73 matches.

Now a Mumbai Indians player in the Indian Premier League, Johnson recalls the entire scene as the real eye-opener for him.

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