Matthew Hayden - Stats Analysis (Tests)

A true colossus of the game, as is evident from his physical traits and his aggregates, Matthew Hayden was one of the most dominant opening (or otherwise) batsman of his times. Not perhaps since Viv Richards has a batsman just casually strolled down the wicket and smashed fast bowlers over their heads for sixes (that his imposing physique made it look all the more menacing also helped).

In what is hard to imagine in retrospect, Matthew Hayden had a rather hard initiation into Test cricket. After an unenterprising debut against South Africa in 1994 at Johannesburg (the same opposition he would play his last Test against, 15 years later) where he registered scores of 15 and 5, he was dropped until picked again almost 3 years later for the home series against the West Indies.

Although he scored a hundred (125) in the Adelaide Test match, his returns over the rest of that series and in the following series against South Africa (again) meant that he was dropped into wilderness again and with Mark Taylor and Michael Slater going strong at the top of the order, a return to the side seemed improbable, if not impossible. He also stated in an interview that although he was scoring heavily in shield cricket, Mark Taylor did not want him to take Slater's place in the side since they had an excellent opening combination going.

But, a testament to his heavy scoring at the first-class level and the eventual sobering down of Slater's form meant that Hayden was picked for Australia's tour of India in 2001, he amassed 549 runs in the 3 Test rubber, and for the next 8 years would make the opening slot his own. In the 90 Tests that he played since then, he scored a little more than 8000 runs at an average of more than 54 and held his own in a team that had other greats like Ponting and Gilchrist.

​