Under-fire Australia batsman Shaun Marsh has received backing from his Head Coach Justin Langer over his place in the national side following his string of poor display with the willow recently.

The questions raised on Marsh’s place in the side especially after his miserable batting form in the UAE, as the left-hander scored only 14 runs in the two-match Test series against Pakistan, while has averaged 13 in six Tests since hitting two hundreds and two fifties in the Ashes campaign last summer.

But, Langer, still, believes that the 35-year-old batsman deserves a spot in the Australian squad for the upcoming one-day international series against South Africa.

Marsh is under pressure to keep his spot in the national side, having now gone 12 Test innings without reaching 50, but Langer feels it would be hard to drop him from the ODI squad after the veteran scored two centuries in five matches against England earlier this year.

As per reports in Omnisport, Langer said of Marsh on Saturday (October 20), “'SOS' has obviously had a poor series and he knows that, you can see it in his face, he knows he had a poor series. On merit, he has to play the one-dayers. In his last five one-day internationals for Australia, he's scored two hundreds. You've got to be fair and you've got to reward people for performance.”

The coach signed off by saying, “On the flip side of that, by playing the one-dayers he might not play [Sheffield] Shield cricket. Having said all that, to me runs are the currency of value, whether you're making them in T20 cricket or one-day cricket or Sheffield Shield cricket or Test cricket, the only currency of value are runs. That's just the truth of it so there's a balancing act there.”

(Input: Omnisport)