Happy Birthday to 'The Great' Matthew Hayden!

[aussie_ben91]

A true legend of cricket and one of the all-time greats. We should all be thankful and gracious to be living in the same era of someone of his stature.

Acchievements and Facts

* Averages over 50 in Test and First-Class Cricket.
* Averages over 40 in ODI and List-A Cricket.
* Former record holder of the most runs scored in a Test innings.
* Out of all of the batsman who have scored 30+ Test Hundreds, he reached his 30th Test Hundred in the least ammount of matches played.
* The best converison rate in the history of International cricket when you consider that his maintained his converison rate over a long period of time.
* Never scored a pair in Test Cricket.
* Only 1 golden duck in almost 100 Tests played whilst opening the batting.
* Test average hasn't dropped below 50 in over 60 Test Matches.
* Has scored more Test Hundreds in Australia then any other batsman.
* Scored the fastest 100 in World Cup history in the 2007 World Cup.
* One of the few batsman to have the 50/40 averages in Test & ODI cricket.
* 1 of only 3 batsman to hit 4 hundreds in 4 consequtive Test Matches twice, along side Sir Donald Bradman and Ken Barrington.
* The greatest Opening Batsman of ALL-TIME.

 

[smssia0112]

I think that last one would fall under opinions rather than facts, but congratulations to Hayden, truly one of the greats. Another interesting fact about Hayden is that he has scored centuries in his past 7 Boxing Day tests, meaning I have never seen a test without Hayden scoring a century.

 

[Left_Hander]

Interesting fact about the Boxing Day thing. I remember the commentators saying something like this when he got his hundred "Oh, Hayden loves Boxing Day etc".

Happy birthday Hayden!

 

[mattfb]

Those facts are quite hard to argue against. Happy birthday Haydos

 

[jordox]

Happy Birthday Haydos..

Awesome player, when he gets going he is marvellous to watch.

We should all be thankful and gracious to be living in the same era of someone of his stature.

He hits a ball around.

 

[aussie_ben91]

He hits a ball around.

Cricket is one of the most hardest sports to have success in, in the entire world. Any champion player of cricket should be applauded.

 

[King Pietersen]

Haha, greatest opening batsman of all-time, you're joking right? Hobbs, Gavaskar, Hutton, Sutcliffe, and Greenidge are all better tbh. Haydos is a cracking player, and he's got a phenomenal record of hundred scoring. He only averages 34 in England and South Africa, and only 28 in New Zealand. They're certainly not the figures of the greatest of all time. He's the greatest Opener of his generation, but not the greatest of all-time. Not from where I'm sitting anyway.

 

[Ayub 95]

Happy Birthday Haydos score you hundred against them Indians

 

[MUFC1987]

* Averages over 50 in Test and First-Class Cricket.

You should put a side note there thanking Zimbabwe.

 

[Slowcoach]

The most Test Hundreds in Australia by any batsman...how dare anyone call him a flat track bully with a record like that.

 

[aussie_ben91]

Haha, greatest opening batsman of all-time, you're joking right? Hobbs, Gavaskar, Hutton, Sutcliffe, and Greenidge are all better tbh. Haydos is a cracking player, and he's got a phenomenal record of hundred scoring. He only averages 34 in England and South Africa, and only 28 in New Zealand. They're certainly not the figures of the greatest of all time. He's the greatest Opener of his generation, but not the greatest of all-time. Not from where I'm sitting anyway.

You can make an arguement that the others are comparable to Hayden but Gordon Greenidge isn't even close.

The likes of Hobbs, Hutton and Sutcliffe all have better averages then him but when Hayden had played the similar ammount of matches as those mentioned by you, Hayden was averaging 58 and was head and shoulders above any other batsman during the period of 2001-2004.

Hayden has only scored 4 less centuries then Gavaskar and has played about 30 less Tests then what Gavaskar has.

What makes Hayden better then all of these batsman is the fact that his pretty close to Ponting (2nd best batsman of all time IMO) and Ponting is a way better batsman then any of the openers that you mentioned.

The whole South Africa, England & New Zealand ordeal is ridiculous. Far lesser batsman have had success in those areas but you wouldn't call them the greatest batsman of all time because of it. Hayden made a 100 in his last Test in England, he destroyed Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock in the 2002 tour of South Africa and in the Tests you mentioned and Shane Bond didn't play in them so realistically, there wasn't any real world-class bowler in the New Zealand lineup so you're going to discredit him for not cashing in on a weak bowling unit?

TBH, Hayden > Any other opener in the history of the game.

 

[manee]

The whole South Africa, England & New Zealand ordeal is ridiculous. Far esser batsman have had success in those areas but you wouldn't call them the greatest batsman of all time because of it. Hayden made a 100 in his last Test in England, he destroyed Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock in the 2002 tour of South Africa and in the Tests you mentioned and Shane Bond didn't play in them so realistically, there wasn't any real world-class bowler in the New Zealand lineup so you're going to discredit him for not cashing in on a weak bowling unit?

Not ridiculous in the slightest. You judge a batsman partially by how he does in the toughest conditions for batsmen and this is a Test that Hayden has failed somewhat. Hayden has shown himself poor often when there is movement around in both ODI and Test cricket. This is something which stats do partially tell, but not entirely.

 

[King Pietersen]

Herbert Sutcliffe played in the era of uncovered pitches, and still averaged 60 in Test match cricket and over 50 in FC cricket, after 754 matches. He's one of the greatest players to ever play the game, Hayden's not played anywhere near the amount of FC matches that Sutcliffe did, and Sutcliffe was also playing on Uncovered pitches, meaning his average of 50 is actually meaningful. You can't argue with 151 FC hundreds.

Jack Hobbs played in the same era, played 61 tests and averaged 56. He also finished an 834 game FC career with an average over 50, with 61000 FC runs and 199 FC hundreds. Hayden may be a quality modern batsman, but he's got nothing on Hobbs and Sutcliffe. If you take away Hayden's runs against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and ICC World XI he averages under 50 in Test Cricket, he would therefore not have got near the likes of Hobbs if playing on Uncovered wickets.

Sunil Gavaskar is again one of the greatest of all time. He played in an era with the greatest bowlers of all time. The likes of Thomson, Lillee, Holding, Roberts, Garner, etc etc. They're leaps above any modern bowlers, and you'd not face an attack anywhere near the quality of Holding, Roberts, Garner and Marshall nowadays. Hayden may have had to face Donald, Wasim, Waqar, etc, but he's not had to face an onslaught from 4 quality fast bowlers, bowling bouncers at you when you're not wearing a helmet. Hayden wouldn't have been skipping down the track to Michael Holding that's for sure.

The trap you seem to fall into again and again is just thinking that the conditions of today were no different to those in past generations. The generations of uncovered pitches, the times of the massively fast pitches with 4 big fast West Indians running in, it was far harder to bat in generations gone by. Pitches have begun to favour the batsmen, boundaries have become smaller, bats are better, the game has very much advanced to favour the batsman. Hayden would not have averaged anywhere near 50 in the times of uncovered pitches. His technique was found out in England against Swing in 2005 and he saved himself from being dropped with a hundred in the last game.

Obviously we're all entitled to our opinions, but you'll be very much part of a minority in believing that Hayden is the greatest opener of all time. I'm sure if you asked all the great cricketing journalist who's the greatest opener of all time, the massive majority would go for one of the 4 names I mentioned in my earlier post.

 

[WORLD CHAMPIONS]

Jayasuriya is a far better opening batsman than Haydos in ODI

 

[Ponting_14]

Jayasuriya is a far better opening batsman than Haydos in ODI

Are you that bored from the cricket that you're trying to piss off Ben now?