Posted by We’ve tried to give up writing about Matthew Hayden’s habit of talking a load of incomprehensible bollocks, but as the man himself says in a recent interview on Cricinfo: “Sometimes things are just meant to be, aren’t they? You just have to give in to the higher forces and say, ‘You know what, this is forever, and I don’t understand it. But so be it.'”
At the heart of the Hayden idiolect is the word ‘process’. For him, it means pretty much anything.
It can mean one shot.
“One of the things that I miss the most about cricket and batting in particular is that meditation of cricket, that involvement of myself – mind, body and spirit – to delivering that one specific process, which is to execute a cricket shot.”
Or it can mean all of the shots.
“That was very much in my overall psychology of trying to execute the base process of batting so that I was on the front foot rather than being on the back foot and reacting to conditions.”
And apparently it is also something you ‘live out’.
“Some of my best innings have been those that were less than 50 balls in duration because of the conditions. You won’t get the glory of 50 or 100 or 150 or 200, but you will get the inner peace of knowing that you committed to what the process was on the day, and that you were part of the process and you were living out that process.”
We’re slightly concerned that he’s becoming self aware though. At one point he asked whether ‘bowlsmanship’ was a word. Then again, in the very same sentence he referred to Bishan Bedi’s “thought process of tossing the ball in the air.”
Time for the rest of us to give in to the higher forces, I suppose.
Ha – logged on to cricinfo – saw a headline on Hayden saying ‘I was as much an iron man as a cricketer’ and without clicking on it immediately came here for your reaction and summary. No point hurting my brain trying to read the article… Thanks for helping out!
Similar experience. Logged onto Cricinfo, saw the ironman headline, sighed and realised we had an obligation to read the thing and provide some sort of synopsis.
NEVER AGAIN. STOP INTERVIEWING HIM, PEOPLE. HE’S NOT A CRICKETER ANY MORE.
You mean he’s no longer part of the cricketing process.
I think there is a room for a cricket-mystic.
Hayden is not the most perfect exponent of that role but he is the best we have at the moment.
The number on that room’s door may well be 101, but room there is.
He refers to himself in the third person at some point as well. A few typical uses of “Execute”, I’m fairly sure he doesn’t go a day without executing something or someone.
However, I did like his analogy about being out of form was like driving with the police behind you.
That was actually very good. Feels a bit monkey and typewriters, but maybe it should be taken as evidence that he isn’t actually an idiot and should therefore stop speaking like one.