Hayden's was always top class and was extremely hard done by in the 1990's.
No, he wasn't. He was not good enough, was shown to be not good enough, and those who were far better (Taylor, Slater and Elliott) played instead. Hayden only ever played as an injury fill-in before 1999/2000.
Only playing against the West Indies in Australia and South Africa in South Africa and outperformed Mark Taylor, who was already well set at International level.
Actually he performed very poorly apart from a single innings, in which he was dropped on some estimates 5 times (and 1 of the bowlers was Patterson Thompson BTW, who might just be the worst bowler ever to play Test cricket). Outperforming Mark Taylor at that time, who was woefully out-of-sorts, is no achievement of the slightest note whatsoever.
He struggled to find his feet in South Africa in his earlier days but 2002 in South Africa proved that once he was well established at Test level and the pressure was off his back that he could play any conditions with ease.
Steve Waugh's testiment of Hayden dominating Donald, Ntini, Kallis & Nel on a hard Johnnasburg pitch (in 2002) and even going as far as to say that it was embarrassing to bat with Hayden, because Hayden was so good, speaks for itself. Especially coming from such a great figure like Steve Waugh. I mean, Waugh, Langer or Ponting would probably know better then anyone else.
It's really rather amusing to suggest that knock at The Wanderers in 2001/02 proves anything particularly good about a batsman. Apart from the fact he was dropped by Kallis off an easy slip chance, the attack was a useless one. Donald was a skeleton of a once magnificent bowler; Ntini was pretty poor at that stage; Nel was utterly useless at that stage; and Kallis has always been hot-and-cold and was hot just once in 10 shots that series (which wasn't that match). Any fool who can bash weak bowling could've dominated that attack, especially on what was a very flat pitch (the SAfricans later made it look a minefield - if you looked only at the scorecard that is rather than watching the actual dismissals) and especially if you receive such an easy let-off.
Open your eyes mate, if anything it "utterly laughable" then it's your assessment that Hayden can't be considered one of the best openers of all-time. He may not be the best, but he is definately right up there.
No, he isn't. Any decent seam-bowler could, and did throughout his career, sort him out. The standard of seam-bowling declined in 2001/02 and pitches around the globe flattened out to an extreme degree. Hayden has always been excellent at bashing poor-quality seamers, but has never been any good against good-quality ones. From 2001/02 to 2007/08, such bowling was pretty rare, and as such he was only exposed relatively infrequently. Before then, however, he was exposed every single time he stepped into Test cricket.
