Every six hit by David Warner in his phenomenal debut for Australia in the Twenty20 match at the MCG against South Africa was a nail in the coffin of Matthew Hayden’s hopes of toughing out his batting slump for a final Ashes series later in the year.
At the end of the Sydney Test, most of the pundits suggested Hayden would have to make a big score and do it convincingly to remain a hope to tour South Africa, and then England later in the year for the Ashes series.
In the end, he scored 39 runs in the second innings in an erratic manner, hitting out early on and then trying to dig in later on in the innings.
As he walked off the SCG, there was no indication that he believed he’d played his last Test innings. There was the characteristic straight-back, military stride off the field, a raising of the bat and then the departure into the dressing rooms.
The television cameras focused on his wife Kellie, who stood as her champion made his exit. There was a suggestion of a standing ovation from the crowd. But there was nothing of the emotion that greeted Steve Waugh’s last Test innings at the SCG.
There was no overt suggestion, either, from the chairman of selectors, Andrew Hilditch, that this was it for one of Australia’s greatest Test players.
Hilditch talked about how “everybody can access statistics” when referring to Hayden’s last run of low scores. And “we don’t go on emotions or hunches or personal preferences … experience helps.”
All these signs suggested that the barrel-chested Hayden, ‘Haydos’ to his team-mates, was determined to bat on, at least until after the Ashes series.
But now a week or so after the Test, we have the announcement of Hayden’s retirement from first-class cricket (presumably he’ll still play the lucrative IPL circuit) and the sight of him receiving his official farewell from Australian cricket during the second Twenty20 match against South Africa in his home town of Brisbane.
What happened to force the change?
In my opinion, he was belted into retirement by the remarkable onslaught by Warner on the South African bowling attack at the MCG.
Warner scored 89 off 43 balls.
Even more remarkable was that the first two deliveries he faced from Dale Steyn, the scourge of Hayden and the other Australian Test luminaries, were smashed for sixers.
What this onslaught showed was that Australian cricket was holding back its talent to gratify the interests and inclinations of an old guard player who had little to offer the national team in any forms of cricket.
The interesting aspect of this analysis is that if Michael Clarke did not need to rest an injured thumb, Warner was not going to be picked to play at the MCG. And until Warner’s onslaught, there was not the slightest suggestion that Hayden was going to retire.
The talk was that he had to score runs in a Sheffield Shield match for Queensland to ensure his selection for South Africa.
Warner then demolished the South Africans and Hayden announced his retirement.
At his press conference, Hayden was asked whether he had entertained the hope of playing in the Ashes at the beginning of the summer. His answer was equivocal, in my view.
The fact that he was there at the press conference announcing his retirement, he suggested, meant he didn’t aim at continuing on for the Ashes series.
Well, perhaps.
What I think may have happened is that the selectors told him that the press of the younger generation of stars, as exemplified by Warner, meant that the ‘experience helps’ policy was going to be abandoned. In other words, he had already been dropped from the national sides in the shorter form of cricket and now he wasn’t going to be selected for the tour of South Africa.
The passing of a champion is always a sad business.
This is especially true if the champion seemed to be reluctant to be put out to pasture. But Hayden had a very good innings. In fact, two innings, one of which – the first eight years of his Test career (13 Tests and only one 100 and one 50) – not so good, and the second (29 Test 100s and thirty 50s) 30 centuries), one of the best ever in Australian cricket.
With a Test average of just over 50, a highest score of 380, 30 Test centuries (only Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting have achieved this for the Baggy Greens), and a strike rate of a century for just over every third Test innings (Don Bradman 1.95 and Clyde Walcott 2.95 are the only better strike rates), Hayden is rated by experts like Mike Coward as being in “a class of his own” and Ricky Ponting as “the best Australian opener ever.”
On statistics it is hard to argue with these assessments.
Mark Taylor, for instance, averaged around 43 runs an innings. It’s hard, though, to see Hayden as so much better than Taylor. And going back in time, than Bill Lawry, Bob Simpson (both of whom I saw bat) and Arthur Morris and Bill Ponsford, previously rated as the best Australian opening batsmen ever.
The phrase that is often used about Hayden is “flat wicket bully.”
At his best there was a swagger, a menace and a physicality about his batting that was very intimidating. In his prime, he stood well out of his crease and often advanced towards the fast bowlers as they delivered the ball.
He seemed to be determined to convey the impression that he was not only going to smash the ball to the boundary but if the bowler’s head was taken with it, so be it.
And yet this muscularity sometimes, and especially on tricky pitches, reduced Hayden to a stiffness and inflexibility that led to his dismissals.
In the 2005 Ashes series, for instance, when he was in his prime, he averaged 35, well below his usual average.
There was a bludgeoning force in his play. But it lacked the deftness and skilfulness of a true master able to amass his runs despite the quality of the bowling and the lack of quality of the pitch.
I always had the impression that when Hayden was batting at his best, this is the way a village blacksmith might bat, with mighty strong-arm hits if he shifted trade from the anvil to the cricket pitch.
There is some irony, then, that it was many great strikes from the newest Australian strongman, David Warner, a sawn-off version of the retired champion, that has forced Matthew Hayden into his retirement.
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