Ex-Australia cricketer Shane Watson has warned David Warner about his retirement plans amid the fallout from Mitchell Johnson’s jaw-dropping attack on the Australian opener continues to reverberate in the media.
‘You never know what is going to happen,’ Watson, 42, told Warner after the veteran declared his intention to end his Test career at the SCG against Pakistan in January before a crowd of family and friends.
It was a bold move, given that his place in the Australian side was far from secure, and it certainly didn’t sit well with Johnson.
In a scathing newspaper column, Johnson felt Warner ‘didn’t warrant a hero’s sending off’ and questioned why a ‘struggling Test opener’ felt he could nominate his own retirement date.
“Does this really warrant a swan song, a last hurrah against Pakistan that was forecast a year in advance as if he was bigger than the game and the Australian cricket team,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson further said there was little fanfare surrounding the retirement of Australian cricketers Shane Warne and Glen McGrath and the pair did not announce their plans to retire ‘months in advance’.
Watson called Johnson’s remarks ‘interesting’ and stressed that ‘sporting fairytales doesn’t apply for all athletes’.
“Dave put a stake in the ground a long way out which hasn’t really been done before that I can remember … where someone’s said a year out, Sydney is my place to finish,” Watson said on the Willow Talk podcast.
“Because you never know what’s going to happen, form alone, whether you’re dominating you get that opportunity.
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“Ricky Ponting would have loved the perfect send-off that he wanted as well and most players do, [but] sometimes you get a tap on the shoulder and you get no choice,” Watson said.
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