Ikki
Hall of Fame Member
LOL, are you kidding me? Seriously? How can you profess yourself as a fan when you wrote the above? How is what you said a simple question? You twisted my words in saying "so when you say this, do you mean that?" I find that offensive.He's not though. All you have to do is watch him play. You can roll off any statistic you want but there's no way that he's the one of the very greatest opening batsman ever. Excellent player, excellent career but you have to do that little more to get in the most exclusive of clubs. I guess you'll take this as a slight on Hayden or depreciating his worth somewhat, but I reckon I rate him one of the highest on this forum but to start going on about he's in the same league as those few is the result of either as I said before, defending him so much that you start doing it when it's unwarranted or extreme bias. Judging by the tone of your posts including the condescending nature and how strung up you've got about a simple question it, I'd say both.
Did you see Hobbs? Did you see Hutton? I've seen Gavaskar and I'd pick Hayden over Sunil everyday if it was just off sight. Let's remember, when Sunil was facing the 'great' attacks he didn't do so great.
If you've actually watched Hayden when batting then you'd hardly seen him struggling. He's been scoring runs for fun.
How can you not rate Hayden in that top tier of batsmen? He has at various times been the best batsmen in our team - like right now. This when there are and have been guys like Ponting, Waugh, Gilchrist, Hussey... how can some of these names be in the top echelon of batting, even better batsmen than some of those openers, yet Hayden can be better than these guys but not the openers you're comparing him with...what else can he do mate? Score even more runs? If you take out his first 8 tests in which he was lost in the 90s Hayden averages 56.
Hayden has done what the others have done if not more. He's scored against more sides, against better bowlers and bowling attacks, at a higher SR (and often average), at a higher century rate and still can't compare? That sounds nuts! It may not frustrate you but it sure as hell frustrates me.