Shane Watson, I share a relationship with you akin to the one I shared with my ex-girlfriend: toxic.
In the heady good times, you promise so much. The dead-rubber hundreds, the blistering cover drives and the sensational looking twenties, thirties, eighties and nineties.
There must be no other batsman in history who scores more better-looking low scores than you, Watto.
Then come the all-too-often bad times, where I throw the remote at the ground in disgust, swearing incessantly at the TV as you throw your wicket away in the most imaginative ways possible.
Wafting outside off on 40-odd? Check.
Slashing at a good length ball that should be left alone? Check.
Countless LBWs, in a variety of different ways? Check.
Holing out to deep mid-on with 81 runs on the board, despite the ocean of greenery surrounding the fielder and another dead-rubber 100 within reach? Check that one off too.
You just can’t control yourself, can you?
I can’t take this anymore Shane, I’m done. You’ve got to go.
I told myself every Test match for years that there was something about you, an itch that was yet to be scratched. That magic word that guaranteed your selection for so long: potential.
But Shane, you’re 33 years old. I’m a 24-year-old man in the prime of his life. I just can’t keep doing this. The time for potential has long passed, and the selectors still insist on calling you a ‘genuine all-rounder’.
But you don’t bowl with the same nagging accuracy and upright seam you used to. You barely even take wickets these days.
When I looked up your statistics a few weeks ago mid-argument with my mate over the legitimacy of your selection, it felt like when I found messages from another man on my ex’s Facebook.
71 wickets? You promised so much more, Watto.
And what was with Wednesday? You looked set, and if there was ever a day you were going to score another one of your teasing dead-rubber hundreds, it was Wednesday.
The wicket was a road. The bowlers less venomous than a green tree snake. Mohammed Shami was bowling his party pies in the most delicious of areas.
Yet you betrayed me again. I cringed as the ball left your bat, sailing into the deep. You ripped my heart apart again, Shane. I’ve given you too many chances. For every good time we have, I can think of another five which hurt me to the core.
Remember back in 2009, when you scored your first hundred against Pakistan at the MCG?
I remember the smile on my face that day, abusing my friends through a drunken haze, proclaiming how you were different than they’d all said. I waited 10 months for your next one Shane.
A few wickets here and there kept me around for the next three years while I waited for your third, which finally came against England at The Oval. Another in The Ashes just months later provided me with the same false hope as the holiday I took with my ex a couple of months before we split.
“Maybe he is different,” I thought to myself. I was happy for a few weeks. Optimistic.
Now, after scores of 10, 83, 43, 9, 40, 25, 14, 33, 52, 17 and Wednesday’s 81, I feel stupid again. We had some good times, Shane, but I need stability.
“Where are you gonna find someone else like me?” I hear you ask. Honestly, I don’t know. The Shield ranks are pretty barren right now, but I’ll make do.
Maybe I’ll experiment. People have told me Shaun Marsh is the goods, but he reminds me too much of you. I like Joe Burns. He has potential.
But for now, I’m happy by myself. I think the rest of Australia is too.
Goodbye, my Watto.
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