Hayden’s gone down the ‘being prodded’ route in trying to recover from his hamstring injury.

That’s what we’ll tell the police when they find us crouched in his garden, jabbing at a doll of his likeness with a needle: we’re aiding his recovery.

While we were on holiday, the only cricket dream we had was one where Matthew Hayden was really upset because we’d said that he personified all that was wrong with modern cricket.

We felt really bad about it and tried to weasel our way out of it by saying that it wasn’t him, it was merely that he highlighted others’ shortcomings very effectively.

It is him though.

Tags: Australia, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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Okay, it’s not as good as the quote that could be construed as a bit gay if you tried really hard and it’s not as succinctly meaningless as this quote, but it’s still a load of nonsense from the mouth of Matthew Hayden and for that reason it gets its own post.

“I want to see Ricky Ponting going like that when he wins and plays for Australia. That’s the heat of the battle, that’s Test cricket, that’s the enormous passion and enthusiasm that gets played from all games of cricket, you see it even in backyard cricket.”

That quote’s taken verbatim from The Age, by the way. We haven’t doctored it.

Prior to that, Hayden had said:

“When I finish cricket I don’t want to have to be in a game where everything is robots and robotic.”

Don’t enter Robot Wars then, idiot. It’s entirely avoidable. Do something else with your retirement - like just going away, for example.

Tags: Australia, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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Do we hate Matthew Hayden because he personifies all that’s wrong with modern cricket or do we just ascribe those traits to him because we hate him?

It doesn’t matter. The important part is that we hate him. The whys and wherefores all pale into insignificance next to the sheer bowel-shuddering horror we feel when we see a three digit number to the right of his stupid name.

Matthew Hayden braved some torrid fast bowling on a devilish pitch to earn his 123. India fielded two - count ‘em - TWO fast-medium bowlers. A 22-year-old swing bowler, playing in his ninth Test and a 19-year-old playing in his 18th first-class match - the latter only sent down eight overs out of the 83 that were bowled.

Okay, so Hayden played Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh really well, but that’s partly our point. An opening batsman should be tested by fast bowlers, not spinners. If he gets a hundred, he should have about 30 bruises to show for it. If he bats out of his crease, the frothy-mouthed sociopath opening the bowling should split his bloody head in two the very next ball.

You could say that this isn’t Matthew Hayden’s fault; that he’s only responding to what’s put in front of him. Another way of saying it would be to say that actually it is his fault. Why not? There’s plenty of things wrong with the world and we’re quite content to blame Matthew Hayden for all of them.

Oh and the lazy bastard had a runner for most of his innings because his stupid silverback torso’s too gargantuan for his unused, atrophied legs.

Tags: Australia, India, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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It’s to more closely monitor the ageing process.

‘Still a few wisps of hair at the front there. Not time to retire yet’.

Tags: Matthew Hayden, lies about pictures by King Cricket
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Groups for whom Matthew Hayden is a standard-bearer:

Modern opening batsmen who don’t have to face proper bowling

Bears who eat faces

Pious turds

India beat Australia in the third one-day international at Chandigarh. However, they couldn’t stop Matthew Hayden from top-scoring with 92.

Hayden’s one-day record since he returned to the side in September 2006 is infuriatingly astonishing. In 30 matches since then, he averages 62.65 and he’s scored five of his 10 one-day hundreds. As far as we’re concerned, this is as sure a sign as any that opening bowlers the world over are mere shadows of those of previous generations. Not even strong shadows. Evening time in the winter on an overcast day shadows.

It’s pretty much official now: In all forms of the game, opening batsmen are the aggressors, not opening bowlers. Time was you had to be hard as nails to be an opening batsman. You’d get pummelled, intimidated and outwitted. Now you just stand a yard out of your crease and nail cannon fodder medium-pacers to the boundary boards whenever you so please.

Matthew Hayden is emblematic of this cricketing malaise. We’re so infuriated we’ve gone so far as to bring back the blue box. THAT’S RIGHT. Only the blue box can save us now.

Tags: Australia, India, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
11 Comments »

We heard that England were playing Australia yesterday, but we didn’t pay any attention.

We’re not going to bother checking, but it’s pretty safe to assume that England won handsomely. Comments to the contrary will be vigorously deleted.

Yes, you can delete something ‘vigorously’ - but only when that something is a gargantuan untruth.

To finish with here’s a photograph:

Again we’re not going to check, but we’re reasonably confident that this is Matthew Hayden driving his first ball straight into the hands of the cover fielder to register his second golden duck of the tournament.

Matthew Hayden updates from our old site

Tags: Australia, England, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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