It was clear from the time Matthew Hayden dashed out onto the SCG with 26 minutes of play left on the third day of the Australia-South Africa Test that the beleaguered opener was going to blast his way out of his form slump, or perish with all guns blazing.
His scratchy and care-worn 31 in the first innings had been widely criticised as being a selfish exercise in self-preservation.
The intent to get on with the innings was there from the first ball.
Hayden faced up to Dale Steyn and moved confidently on to a self-pitched delivery and smacked it back along the off-side. The crowd applauded as if he’d belted a six.
No run.
Ball 2: Hayden again launches into a vigorous drive. No run.
Ball 3: A smash over cover, with the ball slightly skewing from a thick outside edge. Four runs. Wild applause from the relieved and delighted crowd.
Ball 4: A tremendous pull through mid-wicket. Four runs.
Ball 5: The ball that might have ended a great Test career.
Steyn pitches it slightly back of a length. The ball skids through at great pace coming into the stumps low and very straight. The ball thuds into Hayden’s pads. The experienced campaigner manages to get his pad down after the ball has lifted his front foot off the ground well outside the off-side. But the body language gives his game away. His head goes down and then the slow, painful look up to the umpire for the inevitable, career-ending LBW decision.
Amazingly, umpire Asoka da Silva turns down the appeal.
Hawk-eye, admittedly a sometimes inaccurate piece of technology, shows the ball hitting the middle and leg stumps, only half-way up.
A clear vindication of the appeal.
Ball 6: Hayden strokes the ball to backward point and scores 2 runs. Ten runs off the over and a palpable LBW given not out. The opener seems to take the favorable decision as an omen and plays out the rest of the deliveries he faces, including the last over, with the sobriety of someone who has been given a second chance of survival.
As Hayden played out the last over, the Channel 9 cameras focused in on his wife, who seemed to be suffused with nerves.
This was, in my opinion, a sign that the Hayden family is united in the once-great opener continuing with the Baggy Greens, as long as selectors and sympathetic umpires are prepared to give him the not out nod.
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