Perm, y'know mate, you arguing against blokes you're not old enough to have actually seen bat (Gower, Hughes, etc.) is really grating on those of us who are. I'm only JUST old enough to have seen Hughes bat and I remember his was an ability not reflected by his Test average. He played every other week against the WI when they were utterly at their peak and, like everyone else, he struggled. Unlike everyone else, he quit before he could start playing against other teams to bring his average back up to healthy levels. 'Unfulfilled talent' describes him perfectly.
Yeah, I was a bit hasty on this occasion to judge Hughes. It seems that for
most of his career Hughes was a fine Test batsmen. He took a few matches to get going at the start of his career, and should probably have retired after the 5th Test against Pakistan in 1984. It was only then that he really began to struggle against the West Indies, playing 9 matches and scoring just 276 runs. Aside from that, Hughes was pretty damn good, and I made a mistake by labelling him as mediocre. Never scored any runs against New Zealand though, Hadlee dismissed him five times in six Tests.
]You are assuming his technique wouldn't adapt to the circumstances. And those who are old enough to have seen Haydos play in the early days, rate him him as not up to Test standard but then watch as he did exactly that know it's a shaky assumption. If anything, Hayden has shown himself to be extremely adaptable; does anyone honestly think he was an amazing player of spin from the get-go? Again, those of us old enough to have actually seen him early doors would remember he was leaden-footed against even mediocre spin and paid for it many times. You're almost criminally under-rating him and your little bit before where you dismiss every ton he ever made was really harsh, so many assumptions and further dismissal of the attacks he played against did it contain.
For all I know, Hayden may have adjusted his tecnique to a sufficiently high standard to combat those great fast bowlers. It's just that I think if we were to transport Hayden back to 1970 and ask him to bat against some of legendary bowlers of that era, he wouldn't have succeeded. As I said in that post, I didn't want to be portrayed as anti-Hayden to the same level as Richard, because I don't think he's as bad as Richard claims he is. But the fact of the matter is, Hayden has exceeded against spin bowling, and churned out runs on fairly flat decks in Australia. Almost every time he has came up against a top quality seam attack he has failed, which as an opener, is poor. Fortunately for him, the standard of bowling during this era has meant that his technique hasn't been exposed that much.
]I'm also in agreance with grecian; the 90's great quicks were obviously great bowlers and their records reflect this but they weren't inhuman Gods nor were they materially better than the great quicks running around now. It's just that we're in the middle off a generational change right now. The sky was falling in after the 80's when everyone said we'd never see another Marshall/Garner, etc. Then McGrath, Donald, Pollock, etc. came along. Same thing will happen as often it doesn't occur until the great bowlers leave the scene. The lack of a bankable bowler/batter in a line-up often causes others to step-up and I predict (and it's not exactly a prediction full of insight) that we'll see the same.
Did I ever mention anything about the strength of seam bowling in the 1990's? Not that I can think of. I was talking about the 1970's and 1980's, when social compared Hayden to Gordon Greenidge. Look at the bowlers back then, there are some legendary names in that mix. Lillee, Thomson, Garner, Marshall, Holding, Imran, Hadlee, Dev. Not too mention the multitude of good bowlers like Hogg, Botham, Willis and numerous others. During this era we've had McGrath, a declining Pollock, a half-fit Shane Bond and Shoaib Akhtar and not a great deal else. Vaas, Ntini, Hoggard, Flintoff, Gillespie were all good, but not legendary.
