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Let’s get one thing clear. Shane Watson is the best and most valuable limited-overs cricketer in the country and perhaps on the planet.
That’s a personal opinion, but in anyone’s list of the top ten in the world, Watson is there.
He opens, he hits hard and scores fast centuries and he bowls tight wicket-taking balls. I am a big fan of Shane Watson in coloured clothing.
But in Test match cricket Shane Watson is a wasted cap. He is not worth selecting.
Since the end of the 2010/11 Ashes series (which was the last time he played well in long-format cricket) Watson has played 13 (of a possible 22 Test matches) and returned an average of 25.2 with the bat.
That is two years of only 59 percent attendance and returning under 30 (not even under 40 which used to be the benchmark) at test level and people still talk about him as being required? He isn’t even good enough!
People are very fond of pointing out that during his test career Shane Watson has scored best when opening. Here’s a more detailed look at those stats:
Test Match Batting Average by Batting Position: Opening = 43.1, no.3 = 28.5, no.4 = 29.7, no.5 = N/A, no.6 = 24.3, no.7 = 14.5.
Test Match Batting Average by Year: 2005 = 20.3, 2008 = 19.6, 2009 = 65.1, 2010 = 42.7, 2011 = 24.1, 2012 = 31.5, 2013 = 19.3.
Watson has shown two good years and nothing more – those two good years comprised 34 of his 73 test innings.
That he happened to be opening at that point in time (he has actually opened 46 times) is purely coincidental, it had far more to do with the fact that he was uninjured and in good form.
Overall he is nothing but an average batsman having played 40 tests (73 innings) for an average of 36.0 with only two test match hundreds to his name.
It is in the first class matches of the Sheffield Shield that the lie is really put to the notion that Watson can’t bat down the order.
Sheffield Shield Batting Average by Batting Position: Opening = 11.3, no.3 = 55.8, no.4 = 37.7, no.5 = 77.5, no.6 = 33.8, no.7 = 115.0.
Sheffield Shield Batting Average by Year: 2001-2004 (Tasmania) = 42.9, 2004-2009 (Queensland) = 44.7, 2010-Present (New South Wales) = 20.1
Shane Watson never opened for Tasmania, and has in fact only opened in six Sheffield Shield matches (of the 54 he has played), thrice for Queensland and thrice for NSW returning a shocking average of 11.3 (including four ducks).
He has spent nearly all of his time at first-class level playing at either first or second drop.
In his six County Championship matches for Hampshire (in 2004 and 2005), Watson never opened, instead batting at numbers four, five, six and seven in the order and averaging 84.5.
Watson’s two best ever scores of 203 not out and 201 not out were both made from number four in the order.
That Watson likes the ball coming onto the bat is not in doubt, his white ball form proves that, but what he really thrives on are the dead decks and spread fields of ODI and T20 cricket.
The misplaced obsession with opening comes from limited overs cricket which is a very different game to a test match cricket – Mark Waugh opened successfully in ODIs and no-one with any cricket knowledge at all thinks he would have been a good long-term test match opener, and the same is true of Shane Watson.
Watson’s white-ball abilities mask his Test match shortcomings in the minds of the public and the selectors.
The reality is that Watson is not a natural opener and since 2011 (the end of the last Ashes series) his batting in both Test and first-class matches has been abysmal.
He should be told by the selectors to give up red-ball cricket and focus on the white-ball variety.
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