Really don't see why not. I wouldn't have picked him myself, but now he's in the squad he has to be in contention. Besides, he is a wicket taker, or at least he was three years ago when he last played a FC match....
Hasn't played a FC in ages or bowled more than 10 overs a day. What could possibly go wrong selecting him for a test where he may have to bowl 20?
Taylor played League cricket iirc, and was asked not to return because he basically broke every batting record there was.
I was thinking this must be the reason.
Nah, it is relevant IMO.
Yeah English people tend to think he was always awesome but just not picked, rather than a late bloomer, because of the county stuff.
Of course it's relevant. How are you defining batsman? Because Watson certainly hasn't been picked on his batting alone for a fair while. If he didn't bowl I still think he'd probably have played some test cricket based on his FC and limited overs record but he'd have been dropped a while back. And if you just mean top 6 this isn't even close to true. I mean just for one example, Watson is definitely a better test batsman than Flintoff was. And there'd be many other examples of all-rounders who batted in the top 6 who have worse records. Watson averages 40 opening the batting ffs.
Disingenuous comparison though as Flintoff's batting was his weaker suit.
Of course Flintoff is in a completely different league as a test player and I'm not comparing them, but I think it's disingenuous to compare Watson to, say, Greg Blewett or Mark Ramprakash or any other disappointing test batsman with a long career and evaluate which of them had a worse record as batsman or which was luckier to play the number of tests they did or whatever. Unlike those players, Watson isn't being selected for his batting alone and would have been dropped some time ago if he didn't contribute to the bowling attack. He played a test in the 2010/11 Ashes as a batsman but he averaged 42 with the bat for his career then and was in form, probably the only time he's been picked and not bowled when he was definitely not worth the spot as a batsman was in the India tour in 2013. Possible I'm forgetting something. But the rest of the time he's been picked to bowl, and left out of the team when he couldn't bowl, even when he was fit to bat, like for the last South Africa tour. Pretty clear he's not a batsman like those other players were.
His Shield average before he went to county cricket was around 45 IIRC, which is pretty damn good if you consider that the quality of Shield cricket back then was not that far off Tests. Dropped a bit in the 2000's though when he was dominating county stuff. For most other nations he'd have made his debut a fair bit earlier I think.
Played a bit of cricket with Kent, mainly 2nd XI with his passport, didn't he?
Andrew Hilditch is dead?
And 4 scores in the 90s, plus an 88. Would his record really be so much better if he'd gotten out for 100 instead of 93 or whatever? Of course it's important to convert a start into a good score but 100 isn't the only good score. Just a weird fixation on centuries. His batting average accurately represents his contributions as a batsman, he averaged 40 odd at his peak when he was really pretty decent without being a world beater but had some issues with converting starts into big scores, and 30 odd the last few years when he's been crap and would have been dropped if it wasn't for his bowling. He had some other issues as well but he still made the amount of runs he made. There's no way that makes him one of the worst batsmen ever to have a long test career, he's not even clearly the worst batsman from Australia to play a lot of tests in the last 20 years - Blewett's record for example is just as bad. And that's ignoring the fact that he's not being picked as a specialist batsman...
