Indeed. Shame he's not in Sri Lanka at the moment though: playing in games where sides are struggling to bat out 50 overs might prove a tad more challenging!

Why is it a shame? Are you saying you want him in the England side?

And suppose him was playing in Sri Lanka now and scoring runs, would your opinion of him change?

Why bother asking?

He never got credit for his battling century in the last test of the 2005 ashes series having had a shocker all summer so he wouldn't get given any credit now.

True Maranello. But at that time when Flintoff and Shoaib worked over Hayden, they were on fire and were bowling as well as any of the greats. Unlike the greats though, they could not maintain that level of performance.

The denigrating comments aimed at Hayden defy belief, deny logic, and fail to recognize the true yardstick of performance - that being comparing a batsman against his peers.

Each to their own. I will continue to enjoy Hayden dominating bowlers, and the rest can read the results in the scorebook and suffer, with lips turned jealously upward.

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Hold on.. it's Acker that's piling on the abuse here... calling him a "big tonker" and implying that's he's just a glorified baseball player - recall "We are big we hit hard and we will hit".

I've always been prepared to give Hayden credit for being more than that: he's shown good discipine, and in that innings in particular he showed that he can cope (mentally) when his form has deserted him. I've not even got any real objection to any part of his front foot game: his backlift is typically Australian (too high).. and he plays a lot of balls off the front foot (going hard at the ball) where someone more refined (say Slater) might play off the back foot... but (leaving aside questions about his abilities against high class swing bowling) the only obvious weakness is the resort to the flat footed swipe of the short ball where one of the games more natural and instinctive players would generally look to rotate through a swivel pull.

So... by comparison with many other openers of recent times (Sehwag, Strauss, DeVilliers, Butt and so on: you could make a pretty long list) he's clearly the opener of choice. I've not even got an objection to him being rated in the company of some very good openers like Langer, Richardson and Smith... or with Gooch... and I accept that whilst Gayle is far more talented... Hayden's made far more of his ability (Gayle with Hayden's discipline might have become frighteningly good).

My sole objection is to him being idolised as some sort of "great". To me he's not a patch on Slater, let alone on the likes of Barry Richards, Len Hutton, Jack Hobbs or Herbert Sutcliffe.

That is the main point though isn't it? During Hayden's still relatively short to medium length main career of six years which contains almost all of his international cricket (2001-2007), he has not really performed any better than the peers we mention. Martyn, Langer, Gilchrist and Steve Waugh's (even when he was over the hill) performances have been as good. Ponting has been far better and even the likes of Hussey and Hodge have weighed in with runs during that term. His career stats of x number of runs at over 50 cannot be truly valued if the whole team (along with a number of players in world cricket nowadays like Sangakarra) are scoring as regularly and heavily.

Unless they are all great batsmen. Which I would seriously doubt.

Good point Milo. I would loved to have seen Hayden bat against the great Windies side... somehow I doubt he'd average over 40 let alone over 50.

If you are going to compare Hayden to anyone it should be Gooch. He was a firm footed player who went hard at the ball - but he played a lot of games against the great Windies - heck he even played against Lillee and Thomson, Imran and Hadlee.

So to me Gooch's record of averaging over 40 against these guys means much more than Haydens average of 50+ against some of the recent bowlers on display.

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Mark.

I've no time to work it out.. but I wonder how often Hayden played against attacks where both opening bowlers might be expected to end the series with an average of closer to 20 than to 30...

The 2005 Ashes attack only returned one set of truly outstanding (rather than very good) figures: Simon Jones took 18 wickets at 21. The overall figures are actually reminiscent of those in the West Indies tour of Australia in 1988-89 when Ambrose took 26 wickets at 21.46 and three other seamers managed 40-50 wickets at between 27 and 32 a piece - good... but compare that with (amongst others) these figures from the 1991 Aussie tour of the WI:Edit: that's 74 wickets at 23.85!!!

The next WI tour of Aus saw the following top the table:Edit: that's 46 wickets at 22.22.

Or the 1998/9 Aussie tour of the WI:Edit: that's 45 wickets at 21.16.

I've not been right through Hayden's record: maybe he played lots of series against attacks that had the measure of successive sides packed with excellent Aussie batsmen - but I'd be a little surprised if many instances can be found... and I've got no great confidence that Hayden would have averaged even close to what Waugh, Boon, Jones and co managed in successive series against that sort of opposition!

Ok its plain and simple.

Tests - 159 innings, 7739 runs at 53.00, Hs 380, 27x100, 27x50,
ODI - 144 inn, 5760 runs at 44.65, Hs 181*, 10x100, 33x50
20/20 - 8 inn, 291 runs at 58.20, Hs 73*, 4x50
FC - 486 inn, 23484 runs at 53.37, Hs 380, 75x100, 98x50
List A - 286 inn, 11665 runs at 45.38, Hs 181*, 27x100, 64x50

No that tells the story, a batsman’s job is to score runs. Rachael only dislikes Hayden because he has been a dominating Australia who belted the crap out of England every time he played against them except in the 2005 ashes series and if he had have played anywhere near his best Australia would have belted England in that series as well as 2007. Hayden is 35 turning 36 and look how easily he is smashing every bowler he faces.

Your just showing jealously because he isn’t England, and good thing he’s not because you look at all the talented players that they stuff up.

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Bill Ponsford - The only one who could play in Bradman’s company and make it a duet.

Indeed. The story those impressive stats tell is that Hayden is the most successful opening batsman of his era and definitely the first name on the team-sheet if we were compiling a World XI from 2000-2007. However, comparing stats across eras is completely meaningless; is Hayden a better batsman than Border or Waugh, both of whom averaged less when batting against real bowlers in much more trying conditions? No, and to argue otherwise based on bald statistics alone would be, I am sure you agree, infantile.I think that's completely unfair and unmerited; anyone with even a passing acquaintance of Rachael's posts or thinking would know that nothing could be further from the truth.

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A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes
Mark Twain