South Africa vs Australia 2014: Shane Watson to replace Doolan or Marsh for 3rd Test

Shane Watson

Australia’s all-rounder Shane Watson is likely to return for the third Test at Cape Town which begins on March 1. Watson was earlier ruled out of the first two Tests due to injury, but is expected to return for the third Test following the failure of Alex Doolan and Shaun Marsh in the second Test.

Doolan and Marsh played an important role in Australia’s win at Centurion, but couldn’t replicate the same at Port Elizabeth as Australia never got going in the second Test. Therefore Australia’s coach Darren Lehmann is desperate to bring Watson into the squad.

If Shane Watson returns, either Doolan or Marsh will be left out of the squad. Also it will be interesting to see the position of Watson. There is no doubt that he will be the No.3 batsman, but if Doolan is persisted Watson may be pushed to No.6.

The coach Lehmann talked about Watson’s fitness: “As long as he’s [Watson] bowling overs and he’s fit, we would love to have that extra bowler,” Lehmann said. “We’ll have to wait and see how that comes along. He seems all right, batting doesn’t seem an issue. Hopefully he’ll be able to bowl.

“At the end of the day, if we have to fit Shane Watson in and someone misses out, it will be really unlucky. It depends on whether we need the fifth bowler or we don’t, and we’ll have to wait until we see the wicket. And he’s got to be fully fit. All those things come into it.”

Shane Watson and the two reserve fast bowlers – Pattinson and Bird returned to Port Elizabeth for a training session. Lehmann also stated that there could be an additional pacer for the Newlands Test after Harris and Siddle’s failure in the first two Tests.

“We’ll have a look at it, velocity’s a big thing for us,” Lehmann said. “You certainly need pace, we’ve seen that with Johnson, Harris and Siddle when he’s up and running he’s bowling 135kph plus, so we’ll have a look at that over the next few days, we’ll see how they pull up.

“It’ll be conditions and what we think is going to get us 20 wickets. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got the side to do that, because if you can’t get 20 you can’t win the Test match. And I hate draws. We don’t seem to play draws anyway so that’s alright.”

Lehmann also talked about Australia’s batting collapse at Port Elizabeth, but did not take the credit away from the Proteas pacers. He pointed out Australia’s inability to cope up with them was the major drawback in the second Test.

“They bowled very well and we didn’t cope with it well enough so we have to improve in that area, but with their high-class bowling attack, full credit to them. In Durham we played some bad shots to lose those wickets, the disappointing thing was our first innings runs, we harp on it all the time but we have to get better in the first innings. I wasn’t pleased to be bowled out, in the manner we got out we got bowled out, in Durham we played some poor shots but they were too good for us here.”

Australia’s poor record on slow pitches continued as they lost the match at Port Elizabeth. The Aussie pacers were not able to extract life out of dead pitch, but the Proteas pacers did that and also reversed the ball which created problems for Australia.

“It was our first innings batting. We didn’t bat long enough or well enough, that’s as simple as it gets. We weren’t patient enough with our batting,” Lehmann said. “If we had that patience [of Rogers and Warner] we would have made 350, 400 in the first innings and those deliveries wouldn’t have got you out in the first innings because the ball wasn’t reverse swinging like that. That’s just a part of the great game we play. We need to talk about it because we need to keep learning how to play the game. We need to keep improving.”

Australia’s captain Michael Clarke also said his side can bounce back in the third Test at Newlands, saying: “Probably the same way South Africa got over it after Centurion,” he said. “I said last time we were here I wished there was a third Test match being 1-1, so now we’ve got that challenge.

“Cape Town is a magnificent place to play cricket. Generally when the sun’s out, it’s a good wicket, and when it’s overcast there’s a lot of hard work to be done for the batters. So it’s going to be a challenge no doubt about it, but it’s exciting. What we’re seeing now is two teams pushing extremely hard to have success, we’re trying to challenge the No. 1 team in the world in their own backyard. So we know how difficult that is and we’re excited by the challenge.”