TimAngas
State Vice-Captain
With barely a whimper, it seems the end of Shaun Marsh's career for Australia. Despite having been dropped from the test side, his record as Australia's best OD batsman post Newlands in 2018 won him WC selection. With the return of Smith and Warner, he was pushed out of the first-choice XI despite a decent showing in the prior series against Pakistan in the UAE. An injury to Marcus Stoinis provided an opening, but in his two games he went in to bat with nothing to gain at 223/3 and 278/4. A broken arm suffered in the nets cruelly ended his tournament. Whatever his performances in England, you could argue the writing was on the wall anyway. At 36, Marsh is certainly not on the radar for 2023 and there seems to be a good 5-6 test bats ahead of him in the race for selection now. It seems highly unlikely Marsh will play another match.
While he underperformed at test level and criminally failed (in fact, his performances declined) to step up in the absence of Smith and Warner, his final career numbers are no Lahiru Thirimanne. For me, his best innings were clearly matchwinning hundreds against South Africa in Centurion and England in Adelaide. I predicted here on CW that he would be the Mitchell Johnson story of those Ashes and I guess I wasn't entirely off the mark. His effort that played a big part in saving a test in Ranchi also deserves special mention.
His record as a one day bat is really good though, punctuated by 4 hundreds in the last year or so. He seemed like a player who needed time and with the dearth of top order opportunities available in this world cup it seemed like he was going to really struggle.
While he underperformed at test level and criminally failed (in fact, his performances declined) to step up in the absence of Smith and Warner, his final career numbers are no Lahiru Thirimanne. For me, his best innings were clearly matchwinning hundreds against South Africa in Centurion and England in Adelaide. I predicted here on CW that he would be the Mitchell Johnson story of those Ashes and I guess I wasn't entirely off the mark. His effort that played a big part in saving a test in Ranchi also deserves special mention.
His record as a one day bat is really good though, punctuated by 4 hundreds in the last year or so. He seemed like a player who needed time and with the dearth of top order opportunities available in this world cup it seemed like he was going to really struggle.