Marsh a barometer bat
SHAUN Marsh is the new Shane Watson. Australia’s most controversial, uncontroversial cricketer.
If you want to stir up a hornet’s nest just mention Marsh’s name in an online story and sit back and let the keyboard warriors storm your castle.
Within an hour or two of the leaked Australia side posted on Thursday night, the bazookas were firing and they haven’t stopped since.
“Find someone who loves you like the selectors like Shaun Marsh’’ or the sarcasmlaced “great to see Marsh get a chance — the kid could be anything’’ were some of the kinder ones.
Marsh has been chosen as Australia’s No.6 — perhaps too low for a player who feels heavy dressing room nerves — in Australia’s first Test team to play England at the Gabba from Thursday.
Cam Bancroft has elbowed his way in at opener with Matt Renshaw sacked, but Australia might be well served to ventilate Marsh’s nerves by sending him out to open and shifting Bancroft down the order.
The strange thing about the vitriol Marsh attracts is he has one of the least polarising personalities you could imagine, a quietly spoken, almost introverted character and one of the game’s least offensive men.
On or off the field he is not a feather ruffler and there was a famous case early in his career when he was wrongly given out but he seemed too bashful to refer it to umpires (in this way he is different from Watson). He cops more than he deserves but, much like Watson, fans feel a sense of exasperation with his stop-start career in which a leg muscle strain or a form wobble never seems far away. The truth about Marsh is he is not the potential champion his WA fans think but nor the scandalously overrated plodder he is accused of being by the online critics.
He’s smack bang in the middle. His Test average of 36 depicts precisely what he is, a so-so Test batsman capable of the occasional big innings.
Marsh is Australia’s barometer batsman. When he is overlooked these days it means young talent is on the rise.
When he plays it means that talent has failed and it’s back to the future time.
His selection or omission is a statement on the health of Australian cricket.
If Australia’s young batsmen were firing Marsh, at age 34, would not have been playing in Brisbane. Marsh’s Test average overseas is higher than in Australia and there is a theory his shy personality is best suited to the quiet open expanses of sparsely-populated overseas Test venues.
The madness of the Ashes will be a challenge for him and the temptation is to say it will be his last big challenge.
But with Shaun Marsh you never know.