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Matthew Hayden, nicknamed ‘Haydos’ and ‘Unit’, is an Australian left-handed top-order batsman. He was born to Laurence and Moya Hayden on October 29, 1971 in Kingaroy, Queensland and has three children with his wife Kellie Hayden.
Matthew Hayden made his Test debut on March 4, 1994 against South Africa in Johannesburg. He made his maiden Test century in the 1996/97 season, scoring 125 against West Indies in Adelaide. After the 2000-01 Australia’s tour of India, where Matthew Hayden amassed 539 runs in 3 Tests at an amazing average of 109.80, he became an automatic selection for the Australian Test side. In 2001, Matthew Hayden scored 1391 runs, a then Australian record for the most Test runs in a single calendar year, which earned him the Allan Border Medal as the best Australian Player of the Year. Matthew Hayden held the world record for the highest Test score in an innings for a short while, with the 380 that he scored against Zimbabwe on October 10, 2003 and was selected as one of Wisden’s five Cricketers of the Year for 2003. He scored over 1000 Test runs in all five calendar years consecutively from 2001 to 2005, becoming the first batsman to do so five times. Matthew Hayden has been a regular slip-fielder for Australia and shares the record for the most catches by a non-wicketkeeper in a Test match with seven catches that he took against Sri Lanka in 2004.
Matthew Hayden has an equally impressive record at the One Day International (ODI) level and was a part of the 2003 Cricket World Cup-winning team. On February 20, 2007, he scored his highest ODI score of 181* against New Zealand at Seddon Park in Hamilton. He carried his good form to the 2007 Cricket World Cup held in West Indies from March 13-April 28. On April 20, 2007, by scoring 103 against the Kiwis, Matthew Hayden became only the third person to get pass 100 runs thrice in a single World Cup tournament. He also scored the fastest World Cup century in just 66 balls against South Africa, in the first of his three centuries in the tournament. Matthew Hayden ended the tournament with 659 runs at an average of 73.22, falling just 14 runs short of Sachin Tendulkar’s record of most runs in a World Cup and became only the second player to score above 600 runs in a single World Cup edition. In September 2007, he was named the ODI Player of the Year for his prolific performance in the tournament.
Matthew Hayden played his first Twenty20 (T20) match against England on June 13, 2005 at,Southampton. He holds the record for most runs in the 2007 International Cricket Council (ICC) World Twenty20, with 265 runs to his credit. Matthew Hayden was signed by the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Chennai Super Kings for a fee of $375,000. He made his IPL debut on April 19, 2008 against Kings XI Punjab, in which his team won by 33 runs. In his second IPL game, Matthew Hayden was declared the Player of the Match, for scoring 81 runs scored of 46 balls and helping his team to win by 6 runs. He followed that up with an impressive 70 at a strike rate of 142.85 in his next game, batting right through till the team won the match by 9 wickets. He played his last game of the first IPL season on April 28, 2008 against Bangalore Royal Challengers, missing out the rest of the season due to his international duty.
Apart from Cricket, Matthew Hayden enjoys cooking and it’s more than a hobby for him. Seafood is his personal favorite and he occasionally cooks food for his team-mates while on tours abroad. In 2004, he published a book of his recipes The Matthew Hayden Cookbook, and followed it up with The Matthew Hayden Cookbook 2 in 2006.
Matthew Hayden supports the fight against breast cancer and to symbolize it, he uses a Gray-Nicolls bat with a fluorescent pink grip. He is also a patron of Parent Project Australia, a charity fighting for a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. He is also an Ambassador for 2008 World Youth Day. |
