Hayden Quits

Sometimes you wonder whether people get the best advice. Poor Matthew Hayden. Was he really done? He's a reprise of an earlier chart, showing his balls faced totals converted into 'bowling overs per innings'. The yellow line indicates an annual average. The green lines the trends. For the annual averages, I've taken the midpoint between the averages of six-month periods. Of course, sometimes the Australians don't play in the 'English season', so we just go straight through 'Southern Summer' averages. Now, ask yourself which is the outlier here, the 2007-8 peak or the 2008-9 trough? Or both? Could Hayden still have contributed? The thing is, we don't really know. Is such a sudden collapse a traditional sign of the end of a career?

But if he didn't want to go on, better not to. Maybe being dropped from the One-Dayers, the spell of poor form and the media pressure was overwhelming. Or maybe the selectors had already decided, and he left before he got the push.

I projected him at 32 for the Sydney test; his average was 35.