Australia / India

Matthew Hayden leads the way – in the wrong direction

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< 1 minute read

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.

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11 comments

  2. Wait, no mention of Yuvraj Singh’s centrury in the 3rd ODI? No mention of the best ODI batsman in the world nearly beating Australia by himself?

  3. We were too irritated by ‘Haydos’ and too aware that we were constantly repeating ourself to a groundswell of apathy and indifference.

    Normally we just plough on regardless though, you’re right.

  4. The text in the Blue Box is a bit small.

    I am assuming that this isn’t just a lack of effort on your part. It’s deliberate, isn’t it, demonstrating that you don’t want to try too hard in an article about “Haydos”? [nb I feel dirty just typing that nickname].

  5. I can’t decide whether to join you in your irritation of Matthew Hayden (which is always easy to do), or to be delighted that he’s irritating enough to have inspired the return of The Blue Box.

    I always feel it deserves capitalisation, personally.

  6. That, of course, should be “irritation WITH” Matthew Hayden rather than “irritation OF” Matthew Hayden.

    Unfortunately.

  7. Truly The Blue Box’s return is a cause for celebration, but do you really want to live in a world where you need it to bring you salvation?

    Well? Do you?

  8. We’d also like to add that WordPress dislikes The Blue Box.

    For some reason our not-so-faithful blogging software arbritrarily shifted bits of the code around during The Blue Box’s construction rendering our hero malformed.

    We wouldn’t be totally crushed if we didn’t have to go through that again.

    Stupid WordPress.

  9. It’s a good point, and it’s well made.

    Perhaps you could find some way of using The Blue Box in a positive context, thereby allowing us to celebrate its return in a non-conflicted manner? Of course, then you wouldn’t be able to write “pious turds” in it, and there’s a phrase which doesn’t get enough use these days if ever I read one.

  10. Still, at least we were spared the prospect of another Hayden century. And by a bloke called Murali, too. There’s a double positive if ever there was one.

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