Matthew Hayden’s been out of international cricket for a while now. It’s natural that he’d be a bit rusty. We’re not talking in terms of his batting. We’re talking in terms of his guff talking.

He’s not totally lost it though:

“This game, coming tomorrow night, is the opportunity to have that decision to find our balance and play the cricket that our talent is capable of.”

He’s also spoken about the fear of getting hit by the ball:

“Only if I watched it and executed the hundreds of thousands of balls that I have hit over my lifetime could I focus my energy on that.”

That’s The Hayden Way.

Tags: Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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Sami has just pointed us towards The Hayden Way.

It’s currently a one page website which we might as well reproduce in its entirety:

So what does The Hayden Way do?

It prides itself on the delivery of unnecessary apostrophes.

Tags: Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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There aren’t many things you can rely upon in this world, but the Mongoose marketing department is one. Sometimes Mongoose press releases take unexpected forms, but their arrival is inevitable.

After Matthew Hayden used the Mongoose to hit many of the 93 runs he hit off 43 balls for Chennai Super Kings against Delhi Daredevils, we said to a colleague: “How long until the press release?”

Two hours.

It’s not a very good press release. The only real highlight is a hint at a potential pastime for Hayden when he gets a bit older:

“I look forward to bringing it out again to entertain once more.”

“The suspect showed no remorse for his crimes nor the effect they had on the Kingaroy women’s tennis team, therefore he has been sentenced to 100 hours community service.”

Tags: IPL, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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Considering that Matthew Hayden and the Mongoose cricket bat are two of our favourite things to talk about on this site, you’d think we’d have more to say about this:

The heading on the press release says:

Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds to ‘let loose the Goose’

We should DEFINITELY have something to say about that…

Tags: Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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During his appearances on Test Match Special, Matthew Hayden has rather surprisingly revealed a hitherto concealed ability to talk sense. More reassuringly, he’s also been showcasing his nonsense, which is what we’re more interested in.

No-one talks meaningless bollocks quite like Matthew Hayden. Consider the following examples – all from one commentary stint:

• “It’s not a question of skills. It’s a question of execution.”
• About post-2005: “We had to identify what was important to our core values.”
• “The distinguishing features of my Baggy Green was the blood, sweat and tears.”

Please help us document  Hayden’s linguistic crimes in the comments below…

Tags: Australia cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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Matthew Hayden has given Phil Hughes, his successor as Australia’s opener, his seal of approval.

We know what you’re all wondering: How has Hayden expressed this? The answer, of course, is ‘badly’:

“He’s got all the evidence and the skillsets he needs. His humbling personality and how respectful he is are two elements of the baggy green culture.”

Issues

• Evidence of what?
• ‘Skillset’ is a word that needs stamping out
• If ’skillset’ is a word, it refers to a set of skills. A person has a skillset, not multiple skillsets. The word Hayden is after here is ’skills’.
• ‘Humbling’ means ‘to make humble’, so presumably Phil Hughes swans around the place like some sort of emperor.
• There is no ‘baggy green culture’. It’s a hat, you headgear-fetishising knobhead.

In summary: Matthew Hayden still loves to add extra bits to normal words to try and make himself sound like he knows something, blissfully unaware that in reality it marks him out as a self-important dullard.

Tags: Australia cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Matthew Hayden, Phil Hughes by King Cricket
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Richie Benaud is going to be on British TV this summer. He is going to be working as Channel 5’s analyst during the Ashes.

We’ve heard that Richie’s recent commentating has gone downhill a bit, but this role must surely be perfect for him and it must be perfect for the viewer too. There is no way that Channel 5 could muck this up.

Is there?

Matthew Hayden will be one of Channel 5’s commentators. To say that it’s questionable whether Matthew Hayden makese  any sense at all when he speaks is to talk up his communication skills to an unjustifiable extent.

The man doesn’t have his guff talking rated at 11 out of 10 for nothing, you know.

Tags: Ashes, Cricket media, Matthew Hayden, Richie Benaud by King Cricket
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Matthew Hayden’s been interviewed. You don’t know how much we’ve missed this.

He was asked about his deteriorating batting toward the end of his Test career and, as ever, he’s crystal clear about what happened.

“Suddenly questions are asked about your ability and performance, which is absolutely rubbish because your skills and your mindset don’t change much. You don’t lose power, what you do lose is that absolute ability to play it off and that can sometimes lead to poor performances.”

So, in summary: questions are asked about your performance, which is ‘absolutely rubbish’ because all you’ve lost is the ability to prevent poor performance.

Tags: Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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In many ways, Matthew ‘Haydos’ Hayden is irreplaceable. Not his batting, obviously, Aussie opening batsmen are ten-a-penny. We’re thinking more about his way with words and the way he never lets the faintest whiff of self awareness enter his consciousness.

What was your career highlight, Haydos?

“Singing the team song on top of Table Mountain in Cape Town. The sun was setting, we’d had a great afternoon in the change rooms, the whole place was closed but the owner had given us special permission to go up there at night. To me, singing the team song was the ultimate and that was the ultimate time and place. It was about the mateships and the innings that define your mateships.”

The Australian concept of ‘mateship’ always makes us feel a bit uncomfortable. Maybe even more so when it appears in an article where the interviewee has said he’d do anything Ponting asked, adding ‘I’ve always loved playing with Ricky’.

This particular losing tussle with the English language could well be our last update about Matthew Hayden. Who are the candidates to take his place as the physical embodiment of all that’s wrong with cricket?

Tags: Australia cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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“Matthew Hayden’s gone” was our favourite piece of commentary as well as being our way of announcing his retirement. We’re usually quite generous with our retirement posts. Not today.

Matthew Hayden was a batsman in the right place at the right time. He was also an arrogant turd. Essentially though, he was the physical embodiment of several problems with Test cricket and we’ll never get past that.

Fast bowlers

Matthew Hayden had the monstrous fortune to be an opening batsman during the feeblest era for fast bowlers. He had a go at Test cricket when Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Allan Donald were playing and averaged 21.75.

His one hundred during that period came in a match that Ambrose missed. Ambrose had got him for five and nought in the match before and he got him for another duck the innings straight after.

Matthew Hayden’s rise coincided with an increased number of international cricket matches and a resulting heavy workload for fast bowlers that pretty much removed them from the game.

Flat pitches

Matthew Hayden’s career also coincided with increasingly friendly pitches that were designed to last five days.

True greats

With Ricky Ponting the next man in and Adam Gilchrist as low as number seven, Australia never depended on Hayden for runs, even when he was rated the best batsman in the world. With McGrath and Warne in the side, they didn’t even need that many runs anyway. Hayden did his batting in a dreamy land of plenty where Australian averages soared.

Are you saying he was completely useless?

Hayden’s tactic of standing a yard outside his crease was a masterstroke and we’ll take nothing away from him on that score. It was perfect for the time and he carried out his plan with a competence that few would deny.

However, standing a yard out of your crease isn’t possible against fast bowlers, nor is it possible on dicey pitches – let alone both. In another era, he’d have had no teeth and no Test place. However, he was perfect for his time.

We just hated his time and because of that, we hated him. Because of that and because of all the crap he used to talk as well. That said, he’s now going to work on trying to find indigenous cricketers for the national team – an inherently worthy and admirable aim – so maybe we’re going to have to do a complete about face on the man.

Tags: Matthew Hayden, Retirement by King Cricket
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