NON-playing vice-captain Shane Watson may be forced to reassess his priorities as part of a strategic long-term plan by Cricket Australia (CA) to keep him on the park.
CA’s team performance manager Pat Howard agrees that the injury-prone Watson cannot keep playing all three forms of the game given his long and difficult history. “You have to sit down with the player and say ‘you tell me what your non-negotiables are, we’ll tell you what our non-negotiables are,” Howard told Summer of Cricket  yesterday.
Watson is one of very few players in the side who is a regular in the Test, one-day and Twenty20 teams as well as in the lucrative IPL and Champions League Twenty20 tournaments when fit.
“We particularly have to watch those guys who are highly susceptible who are playing all three forms of the game,” said Howard, clearly referring to Watson in particular.
Along with being the Allan Border Medallist for the past two years, Watson’s versatility as a quality all-rounder has made him the highest-paid cricketer in the country.
But Michael Clarke’s rise and rise as a batsman and captain and Watson’s ongoing injury struggles are likely to see a significant shift in the pay scales under a new contract system this year.
Watson has been ruled out of the first five Tests this summer with hamstring and now calf problems and will not play Test cricket at all this home season if he is not fit for the last Test against India in Adelaide late this month.
“We’re not going to make any promises about when he will be back or put any time frames on it,” Howard said. “We’re seeing improvement, which we’re happy with.
“We have to take a good 12 months focus with Shane as well. How he fits in with the whole year and how and where we can manage his workload as well.
“He played a lot of cricket in 2011 and obviously that accumulated at the end of the year.
“We’ve developed an individual player plan for him which hopefully starts dealing with a few of those issues which have built up over time.
“Every player needs a period of rest. Most sports do four weeks’ annual leave and four weeks of active rest.
“That could have been Shane’s with the period we’ve just gone through.
“I appreciate the short term nature of his injury means that he is unavailable and he has missed a key series.
“At the same stage we have to look at a 12-month plan for all players.
“We’ve got a great opportunity to do that and we’ve been working with him on that as well.
“We started putting a 2012 plan together. He (Watson) has been part of those conversations as well.”
Howard claimed there was long-term research which showed there were now fewer injuries than a decade ago.
“There is data which finished in ’09-’10 which had a look at the 10-year history and shows that per 1000 balls bowled there’s less injuries than there was 10 years ago,” he said.
“But we want it to be a lot better. (Daily Telegraph)