The frosty relationship between two of Australia's most senior cricketers seems to have finally thawed with captain Michael Clarke hailing Shane Watson's team spirit and citing the all-rounder as an example for all young players.
Watson, along with three others, was sensationally stood down from the third Test in India earlier this year after failing to provide then-coach Mickey Arthur with suggestions on how to improve the performance of the team, which lost the series 4-0.
Pat Howard, Cricket Australia's high performance official, subsequently termed the barrel-chested Queenslander as "sometimes" a team player, while Arthur's leaked documents alleged Clarke had described Watson as a "cancer" in the team.
Australia's Ashes victory with two Tests to spare on Tuesday seems to have erased all that bad blood with Clarke praising Watson's team-first approach in the second innings of the Perth Test where the all-rounder plundered 73 runs from 40 balls en route to a sparkling century. "What Watto did the other day was put the team first," Clarke said. "He knew we were trying to score as many runs as we could before our declaration and he put the team first which is a great example to the young players."
The duo do not agree on Watson's position in the Australian batting order but Clarke felt the all-rounder did justice to the crucial No.3 slot. "It's a tough position, there's no doubt about it," Clarke added. "Watto is hitting the ball as good as I've seen."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article