Australia coach Mickey Arthur has defended the decision to hold star allrounder Shane Watson back from the one-day international series against Pakistan which ended on Tuesday morning.

Australia won the series 2-1 with victory in game three in steamy Sharjah.

Watson has a history of injury problems and has overcome his latest concern which was a calf complaint.

He has been training strongly since being included in the side for the Twenty20 series which starts on Wednesday night (0200 Thursday AEST) in Dubai.

“It’s always a difficult decision to hold a player like Shane Watson back from any cricket,” Arthur said of the dual Allan Border Medallist.

“In the perfect world, you want him playing,” Arthur added on Tuesday.

However Arthur said with the T20 World Cup to be staged in Sri Lanka later this month, it was common sense to try to manage the burly paceman’s workload.

“This rest and rotation is going to be a never-ending debate,” Arthur said.

“We thought it was better that Shane didn’t play these three ODIs, that he got that rest and recovery that he needed, but he also did training.

“One of the things in the modern treadmill of cricket at the moment is you don’t get time to do that conditioning work. You don’t get time to put your pre-season in.

“You don’t get time to do some work on your technical skills away from the team because there’s just so much cricket.

“He trained last night and I haven’t seen a guy so hungry to get back on the ground.

“The rest will have done him the world of good. I know that he’s ready now to create a massive impact.”