Former Australian cricketer Dean Jones has advised all-rounder Shane Watson to counteract his tendency to fall to LBWs with positive thinking and a little change to his leg-action while batting.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Watson is practising behind closed doors to end a developing theme that has increasingly made him a prime LBW target of England bowler James Anderson and the others as his technical glitch has been the mode of his undoing in three innings of four in the Ashes.
Although the glitch, a premeditated defensive lunge, has long been a part of his make-up, the team's batting coach Michael Di Venuto has stayed with Watson and his opening partner Chris Rogers in London even as coach Darren Lehmann led the Australian XI for a three-day tour match against Sussex that began on Friday.
Stating that Watson needed to thwart the glitch by being mentally positive, Jones, a former Ashes hero on the 1989 tour, said that he believes that Watson needed to do a 'two-step dance' by putting his right foot towards point and his left foot towards the bowler before the ball is bowled to allow his bat come through straight.
According to Jones, Watson, who has managed scores of 13, 46, 30 and 20 in the series, also needed to be just slightly open at ball release, although the former cricketer also admitted that it will take him some time to get used to the solution that he has prescribed as Watson has been playing in his current manner since he began his career.
The report further said that despite Watson's 'falling of the head' problem, his inspiring contact with the ball early in his innings suggested that he could still be a major weapon for an Australian team, which desperately needs him to fire and erase his pattern of dismissals between 20 and 50.
However, Jones argued that there is a clear connection between Watson's issues with posting big Test scores- he has only two centuries in 43 Tests and none since 2010- and the flaw in his technique, adding that Watson's style leaves him with a 'glass jaw' to the dangerous deliveries tossed up in Test cricket by the likes of Anderson.
However, former England captain Michael Vaughan said that he cannot understand why a player like Watson has not learnt that the England bowlers are going to bowl a channel outside off stump and then get the ball to nip back on to the off stump where they know he will play across the line and be out LBW.
