Ashes All-Rounder: Shane Watson's Last Stand as Australia Considers Mitch Marsh

In its drearier moments it seemed impossible that Shane Watson's stuttering Test career would enter old age but then here we are. Now a 34-year-old veteran lumbering into his 11th year of Test cricket - pundits furiously debate whether Watson or the youthful and ascendant Mitch Marsh should claim Australia's all-rounder slot when the Ashes begins next week in Cardiff.

If Darren Lehmann is to be taken at face value much will depend on the bowling speeds Watson generates throughout Australia's final tour match against Essex because the coach favours both pace and the presence of an all-rounder in his Test sides. (Australia Ready for Ashes Defence, Claims Clarke)

Should he though? If either Watson or Marsh ends up having a series-turning impact with both bat and ball it will go against half a century's worth of Australian cricket history because the last man to do so during an away Ashes trip was Alan Davidson in 1961. (Australia Start as Favourites and Rightly So: Gillespie)

Even as Watson found some batting success in the 2013 and 2009 series, it came with virtually no bowling impact in conditions not inhospitable to his wobbly, partnership-breaking seamers. To think he could do much more than hold up an end in a series such as this one feels like a stretch. Ashes wins are secured by strike bowlers, not fill-ins.

To be fair, Marsh is not himself the irresistible prospect with the Dukes ball in his hand that he is batting - taking just the single wicket in 366 Test deliveries so far and having quite clearly lost some oomph in the process of recalibrating the action that kept crocking him. Touted by Rod Marsh upon his debut Test selection as an exciting bowling prospect, Marsh still looks very much like a batsman who can bowl a little bit.

What he does have in spades though is a Lehmann-esque freedom and fearlessness to his cricket. At one point of his and Watson's partnership in the first tour game against Kent, Marsh outscored his senior teammate 77 runs to 5 on the way to a blazing century. In favorable batting conditions Watson continued with that unfortunate knack for posting scores that symbolize his short-comings; the in-and-out 'Watto Lotto' 21 of the first innings, and then the unfairly exasperating not-quite-hundred of the second, when he holed out for 81. (Shane Watson Hits Back at Mark Woods Bouncer Taunt)

Marsh grew up in a family where the life of international cricket always stood at close and familiar quarters so - you'd guess - possibly seems to him a far less intimidating vocation than it might to others. By contrast, Watson still bats with the neurotic air of a body-builder pensively assessing whether the next deadlift could do him in for good. Both men possess the tools to take a session and perhaps an entire Test away from England but only Marsh actually seems likely to do so these days.

The second-in-line senior reserve batsman's slot would be a strange sort of role for Watson to finish up in given that sustained period he enjoyed atop the list of limited overs cricket's most belligerent and impactful players, but it seems so long since he last strode to the crease like Whelan the Wrecker and lay waste to bowling attacks; something he never quite managed at Test level anyway.

England does at least hold memories of personal successes but Watson's one genuinely imposing score in Test cricket - 176 at The Oval in 2013 - came when the series was already lost and after one of the most poignant Watsonian Test series sequences; 13, 46, 30, 20, 19, 18, 68 and 2. Should they elect to pick him the Australian selectors can't expect any greater returns this time around. In 16 Test innings since the 103 he made against England in Perth during December 2013, Watson has scored only three half-centuries and all of them came when the series trophy was already in the bag.

Most likely Watson will finish his Test career in the position he's always occupied, battling against his physical, technical and emotional shortcomings at the crease, giving rise to spirited selection debate and only grudgingly admired for his persistence at Test level when he might instead have retreated permanently to the lucrative and less demanding T20 circuit.

On the batting of another fill-in Australian Test captain, Brian Booth, cricket writing doyen Ray Robinson theorized that "his style might have been influenced by unorthodox circuitry in his nervous and muscular system." You wonder what he would have made of Watson's reflexively thrusted front pad, muscular pounding of the ball and the incredulous facial reactions shot at any bowler with the temerity to verbally joust with the Australian.

If youth wins the day and Marsh is indeed the man for the job in this Ashes series and beyond, there still remains the likelihood that he or a teammate will tire and need the capable relief that Watson can offer on his final Ashes voyage.

Say hello, wave goodbye.