Matthew Hayden: Batting for variety

Abu Dhabi “I follow my passions, which are food, wellness, lifestyle, travel, adventure and also support several philanthropic endeavours, which fill my day along with taking the kids to school. I am a normal dad and a normal person.

“I’ve got a full plate and a really interesting life and I feel very, very blessed.”

Such worthy sentiments are not typically proffered by most ordinary sportsmen — particularly not an archetypally aggressive Australian cricketer such as Matthew Hayden.

He was arguably one of the most devastating opening batsman in history, compiling 30 centuries in 103 Tests at an average of 50.73 between 1994 and 2009. Hayden and fellow opener Justin Langer conspired to fashion blistering starts to their innings in all forms of the game, which left their opponents blitzed and bedraggled.

Epitomising his country’s uncompromising approach to the game like few others, the burly 6ft 2ins Queenslander cut a formidable, snarling figure at the crease and unleashed withering words and deeds to match his bludgeoning strokes.

For example, he once referred to the former India spinner Harbhajan Singh as ‘an obnoxious little weed’ and also smashed a dressing-room window after being dismissed against England in 2003.

How can someone with these macho characteristics also possess a passion for wholesome pursuits such as cooking, healthy living and philanthropy?

The 43-year-old stressed in an exclusive telephone interview with Gulf News that his belligerence was adopted purely to cope with the ‘combative’ nature of sport. “I was a hard-nosed cricketer, with a great loyalty towards playing cricket for my country,” Hayden said. “I was someone that never gave up and kept charging through and believing in myself.”

“Sport is a very different thing to life,” he added, musing on his contrasting on and off-the-field personas. “Some say it does mirror life and I believe there are parts of that that are true. But, you know, it’s a territorial, combative sport, and to that end it’s very different to the relationships you handle away from the sporting field.

“We had a very talented side with a very level head when it came to a knowledge of the game and respect for the game. To that end, we stood on our own two feet in terms of the spirit of the game.”

After hanging up his bat for good three years ago, Hayden has certainly not been idle, indulging in a rich array of activities and business interests.

He’s become a passionate crusader for the education of indigenous Australians, a lifestyle guru via his ‘The Hayden Way’ business and has started up a media content-creation agency.

It’s this impressive versatility which defined Hayden’s career, helping him adapt to the myriad challenges faced by cricketers playing different formats in contrasting conditions. He became adept at grinding out huge scores with a steely resolve, spending a mammoth 11-and-a-half hours at the crease in scoring 380 — the second-highest Test score in history — against Zimbabwe in 2003.

But he was also a master at scoring with ruthless alacrity in the shorter form of that game, his 101 against South Africa in the 50-over 2007 World Cup in West Indies coming off a then record 66 balls.

Hayden said his adaptability owed much to a great understanding of the game — but conceded that the gruelling schedule cricketers in the modern age face hinders their attempts to improve their technique.

Does he have any advice to India, a country he adores and where he has plied his trade in the Indian Premier League (IPL), whose cricketers have perennially struggled to replicate their short-format brilliance in the Test arena?

Hayden said seizing any chance to play in various environments was vital to becoming a more rounded cricketer, citing his own invaluable experience in English County cricket at Northamptonshire in the early 1990s.

“I was probably fortunate in my formative years to be able get so much time batting in conditions with Northampton, who had a young [former England spinner] Graeme Swann in their side. I got the chance to score thousands of runs against lots of spinners, so I learned my trade well at that level as opposed to arriving at international level and suddenly having to being at sea with the conditions and the scrutiny and speculation and all those things that a player today struggles with.”

He went on: “When it really comes down to the Indian cricket team, the very basics of the game are that fundamentally you can survive in the shorter format of the game based on bat-swinging techniques. But someone like [former India batsman] Rahul Dravid had an incredible defensive technique, which ultimately Test cricket is built on, which tends to get exposed at the shorter versions of the game, where it’s all about mastering swinging techniques and that baseball-hitting mentality.

“The key element of Test cricket is to have a very, very good defence and I would say most definitely wickets that bounce and seam like ours do, you have to have a very good defence and you have to leave the ball. It’s not sexy, but in reality it’s what keeps you at the crease. And when you’re at the crease, you can score a lot of runs.”

Hayden did that countless times, although he admits that he was fortunate to have been part of ‘an era of legends, who defined the game’.

A mong those was fellow scintillating opener Langer, the little-and-large pair dovetailing beautifully to amass the fourth-highest runs tally in Test history with 6,081.

Why were they so successful? “The fact is our relationship was a very genuine relationship built around the right ingredients of success. There was respect, a very strong work ethic, a great love of our families and a great love of the baggy green.

“When there were troubled waters, which there always was in cricket, we adjusted and adapted to conditions regularly. It meant we were in the best possible shape to be able to deal with adversity which comes with the immense pressure of cricket.”

He added: “Technically, we were very different players. He was very back-and-across and hit the ball late under his eyes, as most people did growing up in Perth, whereas I was much more on the frontfoot and looking to force the ball down the ground using my natural height. It proved to be a one-two punch combination, with bowlers having to adjust with our strike rotation and that became difficult for them.

Hayden added: “Recently, Justin was in Brisbane and we caught up for tea and we get on famously to this day. In fact, my son got his bat signed and one side of it was me and the other side of it was Justin Langer. He’s stoked about that [laughs].”

Hayden believes that with his heir apparent, the feisty opener David Warner in their ranks, along with fearsome pace bowlers such as Mitchell Johnson, ‘explosive’ and ‘well-rounded’ Australia are favourites to win the World Cup on home soil.

“I think Australian cricket is in very good shape,” Hayden, who won the World Cup with Australia in 2003 and 2007, added. “The facilities are great and the ethos within the group is very strong. They are committed to training regimes and programmes to ensure they are in the best physical shape. They have really good systems off the field to ensure the expansion of young players’ thoughts in terms of educational programmes.

“And they also have an excellent medical staff. It’s hard to imagine why Australian cricket would fall over!”