King Cricket: Hayden just keeps talking twaddle
December 1st, 2008 by Alex Bowden in Test cricket and tagged Australia, king cricket, matthew hayden
For the top players there’s a fine line between supreme self-confidence that allows them to flourish at the highest level and hubristic, deluded arrogance. Matthew Hayden holds that line in one hand, stands the wrong side of it, puffs out his chest and talks bollocks. And we love him for it.
Actually, we hate him for it. But if you run a humorous cricket website, every Hayden interview is like manna from Kingaroy, Queensland. Even the simplest phrase gets mangled into self-important twaddle.
For example, Hayden doesn’t ‘bat’, he ‘executes skills’ and a few weeks ago, in India, he was telling anyone who would listen how he’d always been ‘process-driven’. For some reason, he seemed to believe that the latter statement answered questions about a possible decline in his ability.
Hayden will never acknowledge that his ability to execute his skills has diminished. A pig-headed refusal to even slightly doubt himself is partly what’s helped him reach his 100th Test match at the age of 37. It’s also what made him say the following before the tour of India. “Having played over there and played well over there, I think I’m going to be the obvious target,” he said. Before adding: “I think this series is tailor-made for guys like me.”
Hayden started that tour pretty dreadfully but it didn’t dull his opinions one bit. After hitting 42 runs in four innings, he said: “I think, more than anything, I am such a weapon here, because when I started attacking, they just got so defensive.”
You’d expect nothing less from the man who once said: “The zone, to me, is pretty much every time I go out to bat.
See King Cricket’s regular blog at www.kingcricket.co.uk. King Cricket is a cult figure in the world of cricket blogs and was TWC’s first Best-of-blogs winner in April 2008.
Posted in Test cricket | 6 Comments »
December 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
It’s peanuts you get from Kingaroy, not manna,
and “peanuts” sums up this self-important twaddle from the King of aimless drivel.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Given his ability to say not a lot about very little, he is the Jonny Wilkinson of cricket interviews. Or at least he would be if JW was a tedius, tiresome Australian oaf, who burgled a world record off of a team of part-time Zimbo farm boys!
December 1st, 2008 at 2:24 pm
He also once said that some times out in the middle he says to himself “what would jesus do?”
Apparently the answer quite regularly is, charge medium pacers and puff out your chest.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:51 am
Success often smuggles in arrogance and it comes with the package. Enamoured by success, few really notice it until the rot had actually started. Hayden was such a force against India but this time, it was his tongue, and not his willow, which was doing all the blabbering.
Probably a little irrelevant here but still thought I’ll share a feeling of mine. All the Australian players who toured India recently spoke in an acquired, artificial way that was so strikingly different from the last time they were here. ‘Sir’ replaced ‘Mate’ and they were speaking in the same roundabout way that is otherwise an Englishman’s forte. I met them at Hyderabad for their first open-session interaction and other than Shane Watson, I could sense that the bunch was well-tutored in proper-speaking by CA.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 am
“Sir” replaced “mate”… Australia are becoming England!
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
The 3rd person bit he does is so hilarious.
One of my friends, an Aussie, told me that Hayden is looking for a career in TV after cricket and this is him preparing for it.
Although I am not sure what kind of TV station would hire such an oaf.