A failed experiment; a derailed career

No mobile phones - at least I didn’t have one - meant that the bicycle ride back home from school is filled with thoughts surrounding the match and in the 15-minute journey, you have already played out a 100 different scenarios in your head on what would have unfolded in the first innings. On April 11, 2011, I rode my Hercules Turbodrive back home knowing that two months of holidays awaited me, for I had just given my last board exam.

To put it simply, Watson, in ODIs, at that point of time, was head and shoulders above every opener in the world and was also Australia’s MVP; it was unsurprising that he was the undisputed winner of the Allan Border Medal for two consecutive years. It looked increasingly evident that Watson was headed towards greatness and was well and truly on his way to ingraining his name as one of the greatest ODI openers of all time. 

Nine years on, it’s almost impossible to thoroughly dissect the whys and wherefores of Watson’s steep decline, but if someone were to point a gun at him and ask him to single out one reason for his downfall, he would probably look back at the move from the management to push him to No.3, during the turn of 2012. Watson, who’d opened in each of his previous 65 ODI innings and averaged close to 50, in the tri-series against India and Sri Lanka, was surprisingly asked to bat at No.3, with the management opting to open with Matthew Wade and David Warner. Eventually, that went on to become a feature of the rest of his career as in his last 47 ODI knocks, Watson batted at number three 25 times. That wasn’t the issue, though. It was that he averaged a meagre 32.04 in those 25 knocks. 

In retrospect, Australia had no business pushing Watson to No.3. In ODIs between May 2009 and October 2011, Watson scored 651 more runs than any other opener in the world and, in this timeframe, registered a fifty-plus score every 2.73 innings. Prior to his demotion to No.3, Watson had scored 1124 runs in his 21 previous innings as an opener (averaging 59.15) and was in the midst of a hot-streak, where he’d scored 506 runs in 9 innings, including the 185* versus Bangladesh. Dropping him to No.3, if anything, was a sign of disrespect, and by doing so, they not only took him out of his comfort zone but also ended up killing off the momentum he’d generated over the past 30 months. The move meant that Watson had to start all over again. From scratch. 

Throughout his successful run as an opener, Watson’s strength, much in accordance to the current version of Rohit Sharma, lied in him taking his time in his initial stay at the middle, after which he made use of the long levers to launch an onslaught towards the end. Batting at No.3, however, posed a completely different challenge and demanded him to restructure his game, something that he failed to do.  

Perhaps, a wiser option would have been to give Warner and Watson a long run at the top of the order. Not only would it have given Watson the opportunity to elongate his purple patch as an opener, but it would also have given Warner a much smoother introduction to ODI cricket and Australia a lethal left-hand right-hand opening pair. Eventually, the pair ended up batting just 11 times together at the top of the order. 

What could have happened had Australia persisted with Watson up top is a question that will remain unanswered, but eventually, it worked out just about alright for them, for they did end up lifting the 2015 World Cup. Watson, though, will be forever left ruing the management’s move to push him to No.3, much like my decision to turn the television off before he went berserk against the Tigers.