When England happened to assemble a good fast pace attack. Surprise Surprise..
Surprise Surprise? Not really - He'd been out of form for about 6 months before the tour and continued his poor run until the Oval test. England had a decent pace attack, but they didn't undo Hayden owing to his poor back foot play, they did him with XXX mints and reverse swing which they haven't gone anywhere near repliating since. And he did pretty well against that England attack next time around, albeit without Jones.
Let me tell you when he was 'hopelessly out of form' too - pretty much throughout the 90s. His form just happened to come roaring back when the pitches became easier than hookers to score on and good quality fast bowlers all decieded to retire en mass.
Good timing on Haydos' part i gotto say!..
Good timing all right, like he's pretty well consistently displayed since 2000. He struggled early doors when given limited opportunities, but then Steve Waugh struggled early in his career until about 1993-94, after which he triumphed. Its a load of old cobblers to suggest that pitches suddenly became better this decade - that trend has been going on for yonks.
The point is, if this were the 80s or 90s and you walked from 'here'(wherever here is) to Perth to watch Hayden walk down the deck to Ambrose/Wasim/Waqar/Walsh/Marshall/Garner/Holding/Imran/Waqar/Wasim/Hadlee etc, you'd have either seen Hayden's blood on the pitch or Hayden walking back to the pavillion really really soon. Walking down the pitch is just about the most taunting thing a batsman can do to a fast bowler. And if the fast bowlers happen to be any of the abovementioned name and my backfoot play as weak as Hayden, i'd be making sure my will is in order before i tried walking down the pitch to those bowlers. And i mean it seriously.
Here is Sydney, about 5000 kms from Perth. And if Waqar was bowling anywhere in Australia I'd back Hayden against him because Waqar went like a busted here. The WIs of the 80s were a great attack, as I've already said, but let them be that great having to bowl 90 overs a day instead of sauntering through 65-75 - it was a different era then. To say Hayden would not have coped with it is as feckless as me saying he would have averaged 70 in that era - you just dont know.
Au contraire. Their fall from grace followed not long after over rates began to be enforced.
I wont comment on Lara or Tendulkar- because they've proven it over and over again against quality bowlers on much harder surfaces. But the likes of Sehwag, Ponting, Hayden, Kallis, Dravid, etc- ie, all those who happened to find form when pitches flattened out and good bowling died, would suffer majorly against good fast bowling. Dravid the least and Hayden the most in my opinion from that group.
You're right - such a crap era, those blokes are all duds. Dravid's technique is rock solid. Ponting has scored everywhere bar India and plays fast bowling as well as anyone, Kallis also has a great technique, Sehwag dashes - mate, it's time to face a salient fact - the game has changed, and these blokes take on bowling like others didn't before - hemets and pitches have a lot to do with that, but don't come at us with the rubbish that only the contemporaries would have to adjust - the blokes bowling in the 80s would have to adapt as well to the more aggressive strokeplay against them.
Trust me, if Hayden is taking on a bunch of nobodys of today, those nobodys would've been murdered by Gavaskar, Richards, Miandad, Chappell and dozen others.
And your point is? Asserting (rightly, though Gavaskar only ever made runs vs Australia either in the 80s when they were crap or when he toured here during WSC) that those blokes are all great players doesn't prove that Hayden is "the most over-rated cricketer" of all, as you so blithely asserted earlier.
Look- i don't care if its Bradman, Tendulkar or Lara, let alone lesser bats like Ponting - the # of games where the WI bowlers of the 80s/90s would've to go get another ball from the box would be far rarer than the # of games the batsmen would've returned trembling.
The fearsome-foursome was an indominatable attack. Best you could hope for is survival. But so far, i've never seen anyone dominate 4 bowlers (more than once or twice in their entire careers)who are accurate to the inch, bowl above 90mph and/or routinely bowl balls at good length that shoots for your throat.
You're right. Bradman didn't hit many sixes - he picked which picket on the fence he wanted to hit then stroked the ball along the ground into it.
And the number of times batsmen who returned trembling would be a shed load less if they wore helmets and if the bowlers had to bowl a fair amount of overs.
The *only* way to dominate bowling like that is to utterly master one shot : the hook. And even Mohinder Amarnath- who was 10 times the player of that shot than Tendulkar,Lara or Ponting are, spat blood a few times against the fearsome foursome.
Well mate, if you dont think Ponting has mastered the hook shot, you have missed his entire international career. A cricket ball coming at your head at 90 mph is the same whether it's delivered in 1984, 1995 or 2007 - it's still quick, it's still dangerous and you have to be able to cope with it. He plainly can. The fact that the WI in the 80s had 4 bowlers of the highest quality is not in question, but the really good players of that era like G Chappell and Gavaskar scored runs against them. The real queality players of this era would too.
No. His game and technique are substandard for an opener. Very very substandard. He was a product of the era he came in- a mediocre product at that- then brought back when it became easy money to bat.
That's purely a matter of opinion and you and I obviously disagree. I don't regard him as great, but I rate him highly. HIs technique is not orthodox, but then Viv played across the line and they said Bradman's grip would bring him undone too. It works for him, and he's worked for Australia.
The Shane Watson fan club speak out
