Burnout threatens all modern sportsmen, and in international cricket there are few more unrelenting tasks than opening the batting in Tests and one-dayers. Day in, day out, you’re expected to see off snarling fast bowlers and the hard new ball, posting your side a score.
Not post a score slowly, mind. That went out with dear old Athers. Test cricket is the new one-day cricket, and openers no longer block their way to a hundred, they bludgeon. In this high-octane environment, 1% off your game can be all it takes to mess up.
Welcome to the opening-all-hours worlds of Marcus Trescothick and Matthew Hayden, who will lead the batting respectively for England and Australia in 16 internationals of various descriptions between mid-June and mid-September. If normal service is maintained, they will score more runs for their teams than anybody else. But will normal service be maintained, especially in the Tests? Hayden is anxious to know, because some time last year, during which he became the first man to score 1,000 runs in Test cricket for four years in succession, the magic left his game. Whereas before he had churned out hundreds at a rate of one every two Tests, he suddenly found that he could start but not finish. In his past 22 Test innings, spanning four series, the farthest he got was 70. In times past, weary bowlers likened Hayden’s bat to a barn door. Now it resembled a colander. He has been bowled only 12 times in his Test career, but four of these have been since last October.
Opponents learnt to frustrate him by channelling the ball wide of off stump, but his fatigue is no secret. The Australians took pity on him during the one-day VB Series in January and February, resting him in some matches. The break helped. In New Zealand he returned to form in the one-day arena with a century, but in Tests there was little change. His job this summer will be to batter Steve Harmison off his length, but will he be up to it? One of the few Englishmen not laughing at Hayden’s demise will be Trescothick, whose attendance record in the past five years is even more imposing than Hayden’s. Since he first appeared in an England shirt in July 2000, he has played in 59 out of 62 Tests (a hand injury in 2002 kept him out of the other three) and 99 of 103 one-day internationals. The one-dayers he missed were on the controversial tour of Zimbabwe last winter. On the instructions of management, he was rested.
Given the choice, Trescothick would have gone to Zimbabwe, political hot-spot or not.
He may have benefited from central contracts, which have allowed him to conserve his energies for England, but the schedule is such that large chunks of his year are still devoted to 24/7 cricket. He, too, knows all about fatigue. After scoring his fifth century in 11 Tests in Johannesburg in January, a series-turning innings of measured ferocity that Hayden would have been proud of, Trescothick limped through the remaining four weeks on tour. His average in the one-day series was 14, a run drought that has extended into his form for Somerset this season.
Two years ago, when Hayden was world No 1 in both formats and couldn’t get enough of the game, something similar happened to Trescothick at the World Cup in South Africa, a tournament that followed hard on the heels of a long tour of Australia. He returned home chuntering that he didn’t want to hear the word “cricket” for some time, which in the lexicon of this mild-mannered West Countryman translated to him declaring he’d had a gutful of it.
Trescothick has been accused of naivety in his time, once opting to leave the field in decent light at Headingley when South Africa were on the rack, but is smart enough to know he must pace himself. He not only has the cautionary tale of Hayden to consider; there’s also Herschelle Gibbs, another of the small band who have shown the skill and stamina to regularly open in both formats (Chris Gayle of West Indies, Virender Sehwag of India and Sri Lanka’s Sanath Jayasuriya are others). By late last year Gibbs had been on the international treadmill virtually non-stop for four years when he hit the “wall”. His father said he was suffering from exhaustion and his son sat out several matches. He has since returned but is now batting in the middle order in Tests and one-dayers.
As things stand, Trescothick and Hayden are just about hanging in there doing both jobs. The system demands that they perform like machines, and, overall, they disappoint remarkably infrequently, perhaps because both relish the hairshirt disciplines of constant training and practice. Hayden’s preparations have included triathlons. No England player spends more time than Trescothick in the nets, studying videos or taking catches from Duncan Fletcher. In an emergency, he is England’ s stand-in captain and wicketkeeper. He is also their top slip catcher (Hayden’s close catching, once outstanding, has slipped of late). Nasser Hussain describes Trescothick as the most unselfish cricketer he has ever encountered.
But, much as they enjoy the work, both appear to play better when close to home. Surely it is no coincidence that these two men, who spend so much time on the road and have spoken about how much happier they are on tour when joined by their wives, have performed better at home than abroad. Hayden’s average drops by almost 16 runs when on foreign soil, Trescothick’s by 19. In the case of this summer, then, more good news for England.
Of course, Hayden may well come good again. In the six years it took him from 1994 to 2000 to establish himself in the Australia side, he had plenty of practice at ironing out the flaws. But perhaps the thing that needs fixing more than any aspect of his technique is the thing that most underpins his game: self-belief. Only somebody with supreme confidence can drill fast bowlers back over their heads with the frequency he once achieved. His other problem is that spin bowling, once meat and drink to him, has accounted for his wicket many times during his lean time, and Ashley Giles, England’s chief spinner, is at the top of his game.
Trescothick has demons of his own to chase. In two Ashes series he has failed to dominate Australia’s attack in the way he has others; they simply did not give him the four-balls he needed. He passed 50 three times in 10 innings in England four years ago and once in 10 in Australia in 2002-3, and that was courtesy of an early let-off.
Trescothick has improved his discipline since then. He has become much better at leaving good balls outside off stump, but just as he may have refined his game, so may his nemesis Jason Gillespie, who scalped him seven times in those two series. Now Gillespie may bear down on off stump in the knowledge that Trescothick will be waiting for the ball slanted across him that was so often his downfall in the past. But just as Hayden will have Harmison in his sights, so Trescothick may look to knock Glenn McGrath off his length, as he did in the ICC Champions Trophy semi- final last year, when four fours in an over had steam pouring from McGrath’s ears.
They have similar roles and play in similar ways, but Trescothick and Hayden trod different routes to get where they are. After his first run in the Test side was cut short by Allan Donald breaking his hand, Hayden was overlooked by Australia for so long that it seemed as though his moment had passed. He was 28 before he finally established himself.
Trescothick, on the other hand, looked destined to play for England from his teens, when he followed a 4,000-run season at 15 with an avalanche of runs for the national under-19 team. His development briefly stalled at Somerset, but he was still only 24 when Fletcher first picked him.
They are different characters, too. Hayden thrives on confrontation. He is a relentless “sledger” and his temper can get the better of him, as the glaziers at the Sydney Cricket Ground can testify. Two years ago Hayden took out his frustration at being given out against England on a dressing-room door.
Trescothick is quieter, with a reputation as clean as his hitting. Even when Shane Warne said of him last year that “everyone knows how to get him out”, he declined to bite back. Disappointed at being passed over for the England captaincy last time around, he has not given up hope of one day succeeding Michael Vaughan. At 29 he should have five good years left in him if he can avoid going stale. Although super-fit, Hayden, at 33, may see two more years as the outer limit of his ambition.
