Watson plays down tiff with Lee

Australian all-rounder Shane Watson has played down his reported tiff with fellow pace bowler Brett Lee over his comments about Lee's fitness ahead of last month's Headingly Ashes Test.

It maybe recalled that a pre-match press conference, Watson hasd controversially said that it was a great shame Lee would not be picked because he wasn't match-fit.

While Watson maintains that this what the team officials had told him to say, an angry Lee at that time swiftly confronted the media in the stands of the adjoining rugby league stadium to vouch for his own fitness.

''Me and Brett are very good friends so I knew that wasn't going to affect our friendship,'' Watson told The Sun-Herald.

''You're always on tour spending time with people anyway, you always have your occasional ups and downs like I suppose a marriage does, because you're with people all the time. At that time when I heard what had happened, of course I was disappointed that it had come out as a mixed message, but in the end I was just going by what I was told by our hierarchy, that was the case with him," he was quoted, as saying.

''In the end it was unfortunately a mixed message, that's the way it goes sometimes.''

''I had a chat to Brett and told him what I'd been told, what the stance was that I'd been told, unfortunately that was different to his - that I hadn't been told about,'' Watson said.

''He was fine with it, you move on.''

Lee has been prevented from talking to the press since that incident a month ago.

His last Test appearance came during Australia's nine-wicket loss to the Proteas in the Boxing Day Test last year, during which he succumbed to foot and ankle injuries that required surgery and kept him out of the subsequent tour to South Africa.