Matthew Hayden

Richie Benaud appearing on Channel 5’s Ashes highlights show but unfortunately it’s a no-go zone for viewers

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.

Deteriorating batting performances late in a career

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.

Haydos: gone but not forgotten

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?

Matthew Hayden’s gone

“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.

Matthew Hayden – sport’s greatest orator

Never mind cricket. Matthew Hayden’s the greatest speaker in sport, full stop.

“Ultimately it will be my call to look at the bloke that talks to yourself every day in the mirror and say ‘mate it is time to go’ or ’saddle up, pull your socks up and get on with it, you’ve got South Africa and you’ve got the Ashes’.”

Stephen Fry must be shitting himself.

Matthew Hayden, please don’t retire

There are those of you who may think we’d be pleased to see Matthew Hayden retire. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For one thing, it’s fun to watch his futile attempts to scrabble runs, but more importantly, we’d hate to see the cricket world lose one if its greatest orators.

“I’m paid to get runs and when you are short of runs you have to start asking questions and they (the selectors) do that better than anyone. For my mind it is as simple as playing out the summer and taking the time and the energy to get back on the horse or make a decision not to. It’s as clear cut as that,”

It’s that simple, people. It’s THAT clear cut.

He also gives some clear evidence that he’s suffering from some sort of fractured personality. Speaking about himself in the third person always hinted at such problems, but now there’s a voice – a voice with feet, it seems…

“That little voice deep inside will keep kicking Matthew Hayden along.”

Matthew Hayden gives you a choice

Matthew Hayden’s been getting a few rough decisions of late, as batsmen often do when the ball’s missing the bat time and time again.

Hayden says:

“Hawkeye I think gives you a pretty good understanding of what line the ball pitched at, but take my lbw decision in the second innings, which Hawkeye had hitting the top of off. Now, unless I’m a really poor cricketer, I’m telling you that’s going nowhere near the stumps.”

So either Hawkeye’s wrong in this instance or Matthew Hayden is a really poor cricketer. Those are the two options, there’s no middle ground and you HAVE to choose.

Matthew Hayden plays his 100th Test match

It’d be just like Hayden to hit a hundred as well – just to spite us.

In honour of this momentous achievement, Hayden’s been answering the questions that you’ve all been asking these last 14 years. These are the questions on everyone’s lips.

What is the fabric of playing for the baggy green?

“Anyone that’s got into the Australian cricket team has had to have their personal challenges met, and they’ve confronted those and conquered them – that’s just what it means to play for Australia, that’s the fabric of playing for the baggy green.”

How do you guarantee the best result in terms of how you prepare yourself?

“Matthew Hayden in 1991 worked as hard as he works in 2008. And that guarantees you at least the best result in terms of how you prepare yourself, but it doesn’t guarantee success.”

What do you do to letters of the alphabet when you celebrate?

“We all enjoy celebrating. What has changed now is we have taken it to a new level in terms of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s professionally.”

How many percent has Ponting been behind you throughout your career? And don’t say more than a hundred, because, by definition, a hundred’s the maximum.

“Ricky’s been a thousand per cent behind me for my entire career.”

That was a stupid question on our part. Support’s not a concept that can be measured in terms of percentage anyway. Nor is effort. Nor is fitness. Take note, the world of cricket.

Matthew Hayden opens his mouth

And an arse falls out. Someone should tell Matthew Hayden to try and blend into the scenery if he ever sees a tape recorder or a microphone in the vicinity.

“When you get to my age, you get to a point where the next 12 months is a long, long way away.”

Not all of it, surely Matthew? Okay, we can see that next October’s quite a way away. But December? That’s not long away. Tomorrow? That’s fairly near. One second’s time? That’s already gone. Does that second seem a long, long way in the past now, Matthew?

He continues:

“But having said that, I’ve been really process-driven right throughout my career. It’s all been about how I was going to present myself for this Test and whether I was in good shape to play it. I feel like both of those are crossed off.”

You heard it from the man himself: Matthew Hayden is process-driven.

We can only presume that the process that’s driving him is the one he’s going through in order to become the biggest guff-talking tool in human history.

We’ll miss Hayden when he goes. He’s like a lightning rod for all our blind fury.

Matthew Hayden: the batsman, the weapon, the legend

Matthew Hayden may have scored 42 runs in four innings, but according to him, it’s the WAY that he’s scored those runs that has been so vital to Australia’s ongoing success…

“I think, more than anything, I am such a weapon here, because when I started attacking, they just got so defensive.”

What kind of a weapon would that be, Matthew? A water pistol? A plastic sword? An imaginary laser?

Thanks to Dada for sending us this glorious quote.