But Usman Khawaja, who has become one of the most successful Test openers in history after starting his career in various middle-order positions, suggested Labuschagne should remain and No. 3 while Travis Head and Mitchell Marsh have both stated they would prefer to stay where they are, which has raised the prospect of Green opening the batting.
“There’s no question in my mind he can [open],” Watson told ESPNcricinfo. “Australia needs to get Cameron Green into the team and the opportunity that you’ve got right now is for him to open. They’ll just have to manage his bowling, for sure, like with my bowling when I was opening the batting. But he absolutely has got the skill, the run-scoring ability and the understanding to be able to make the most of being an opening batter for sure. It might take him a game or two just to be able to work out exactly what his game plan is. But he’s definitely got the game and the mentality to make the most of it.”
Picking Green to open would be a left-field option given he has never batted higher than No. 6 in his 36 Test innings and has never opened in first-class cricket, although he has opened in T20Is for Australia. But it also might be the least disruptive option for the selectors to get him into the Test team given the settled nature of the middle order.
Watson went through the same experience in the 2009 Ashes where his only avenue back into the Test team was to open. He did it with great success, playing the best cricket of his Test career over the next two years, averaging 43.67 in that period and passing 50 in 17 of 45 innings, with two Test hundreds.
“If you’re scoring runs even slightly lower down the order, you’re facing new balls at times whether you come in early or facing a second new ball, so you’re very well equipped to be able to deal with a brand new ball opening the batting,” Watson said. “We have seen it a number of times. Uzzy and Simon Katich are great examples.
“It just comes down to what the game plan is and then having the right mindset to be able to capitalise on the technical skills that you do have. I certainly didn’t serve an apprenticeship in Shield cricket opening the batting but it suited me down to the ground when I got the opportunity to do it Test cricket, just with my technique but also with my mindset that was created because of it.”
Watson wrote in detail about the mental battles he had during his professional career in his book, Winning the Inner Battle, where he said that opening had put him in the best mindset of his international career.
“I started to bat in a way that I only ever dreamed of and this was all because I had no fear from ball one,” he wrote. “I let go of all of that care and pressure that I had been putting on myself and just took the bowlers on from ball one in every format that I was batting in.”
Green himself has suffered with nerves and has struggled with waiting for long periods batting down the order, having been a top-order player as a junior and having had most of his Shield success batting at No. 4. Watson felt his move to the top of the order completely changed his mentality.
“For me, it just gave me no time to think,” he added. “As soon as the last wicket went down then it was, get my pads on and get out there. Whereas when I was batting at No. 6, there was so much time to overthink things. Opening, I felt like I had nothing to lose. It really freed up my whole game just to be able to stand there and react with intent.”
Watson said Green’s bowling loads would need to be managed carefully by Cummins as Ricky Ponting had done with him. “It did reduce the number of overs that I bowled during a Test match at times,” he said. “But I would still bowl around 10 overs per day. But he would do everything he could for me not to bowl when we were trying to get the last couple of batters out, just to give me the chance to not be overly fatigued going into opening the batting.”
Alex Malcolm is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo