SYDNEY, Oct 23: The chances of speedster Mitchell Johnson forcing his way into the Australian pace attack for the first Ashes Test were firming following his impressive performance in the Champions Trophy, skipper Ricky Ponting said.

The Queensland left-arm paceman took the wicket of Kevin Pietersen for one in his figures of 3-40 off 10 overs as Australia thrashed England by six wickets in their Champions' Trophy one-dayer in Jaipur at the weekend.

His star is on the rise as an Ashes weapon after skittling superstars Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Pietersen in the past five weeks.

It's Johnson's knack of troubling the world's best batsmen that has pitched him into Ashes calculations, with incumbent Test seamer Stuart Clark recovering from a thigh strain.

“His name will come up for sure,” Ponting said of Johnson's Ashes aspirations in Monday's Daily Telegraph.

“I would imagine that he's going to be spoken about a lot coming into the first Test match, because he's come along as quickly as he has and he's fitting into international cricket really well.

“He has done everything right, he's performing on the big stage and getting good players out.

“If you look at the players he's got out in the games he's played, he got Lara and Sachin in Malaysia and he knocked over Pietersen here in India.

“They are three of the better players going around.”

Australia's bowling coach Troy Cooley believes Johnson is something special, a youngster with the rare ability to swing the ball both ways at high speed.

“The first few games he played he was a little bit nervous and a bit tight.He's starting to get a lot of that out of his system now,” Ponting was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “He's now confident and relaxed playing at this level.

“He's improving every game and doing everything that he possibly can to keep his name in front of the selectors.”

England's susceptibility to the short-pitched ball was noted by the Australians, who have plans for an Ashes bumper barrage in next month's series.

“I think we can for sure, I think a lot of England's players like to play that (hook) shot,” Ponting said.

“Through the last Ashes series, we felt that the grounds were quite small in England, and a lot of them were just lobbing over our heads. ”—AFP