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If you want to buy into a Test cricket argument, there’s no better place to start than Shane Watson.
Even his knockers will agree the 32-year-old has immense talent. But it’s how he applies that talent between his ears.
Yesterday at Adelaide Oval in the second Ashes Test, he failed yet again to convert a half-century into three figures.
His 53 was his 21st half-century in 86 completed digs – a 24% return.
That’s right up there with Test cricket’s most successful batsmen, all of whom have scored over 10,000 Test runs.
Chivnarine Chanderpaul shows the way with 29%, from Allan Border’s 28%.
Then there’s a cluster with Rahul Dravid 25%, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis on 24%, Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh, Kumar Sangakkara and Sunil Gavaskar on 23%, with Brian Lara on 21%.
Where Watson comes hugely unstuck, and gives his detractors plenty of ammunition to snipe, is his three tons in 86 completed digs.
Conversion rate 0.03%.
Among the 10,000-plus Test runs brigade, Kallis and Sangakkara show the way on 18%, Tendulkar and Gavaskar with 17%, Ponting on 16%, Lara and Steve Waugh on 15%, Dravid 14%, Chanderpaul 13%, with Border 12%.
So what is Watson’s problem?
The knockers will happily tell you Watson hasn’t the concentration for the five-day game and is better-suited to the shorter formats, where he can blaze away with impunity.
Others will give shot selection as his Achilles heel, others that Watson doesn’t really know what he wants to be and is torn between formats.
There’s a smattering of truth in all the suggestions, but that doesn’t make it any easier for skipper Michael Clarke and coach Darren Lehmann to decide where to bat him.
There haven’t been too many Test cricketers over the years batting three and averaging in the mid-30s.
The 50s are Watson’s pressure area. Of the 21 of them he’s scored, 10 of them range between 51 and 57.
Three are in the 60s, just one in the 70s, three in the 80s, and four in the 90s.
They have been the killers – 96 bowled, 93 run out, 97 caught, and 95 leg before, covering the spectrum.
This is Watson’s 48th Test, sometime soon you’d reckon he will get himself sorted out, and the baggy greens will be a far stronger unit if his performances with the bat match his ability.