Melbourne, August 13: Former cricketer Mathew Hayden has advised axed opener Phillips Hughes to continue with his natural game to adjust to the English conditions and not to analyse on how he has been performing, which could be ‘self-destructive’.
Hughes was dropped from the Australian Ashes squad following his poor performance in the opening two Tests of the five-match series. However, the 21-year-old NSW batsman said he has not given up any hope of a call-up for the final Test and has vowed to come up hard despite criticisms from his home crowd.
The former Australian opener Hayden believes that Hughes is good enough to sort out his own game without being cluttered by too much advice from others. ”I don’t reckon you can coach natural talent,” Hayden said. ”He’ll just naturally adjust. He’s got all that in him. ”If he can use me as an example, I reckon for six years I was breaking apart my game so much and I actually forgot my strengths. ”The process of analysis is a really, really destructive process,” he was quoted as saying by ‘The Australian’.
The 37-year-old former left-hander, who has scored 8625 runs from 103 Tests and amassed 6133 runs in his ODIs, further felt that facing a rampaging Andrew Flintoff in the English conditions is always going to be tough. ”It can be really hard to open the batting here at times,” Hayden said. ”He struck a very, very good bowler, a bloke who I think would be in my top five bowlers I’ve faced in these sorts of conditions. ”It’s a reminder that he (Hughes) shouldn’t bust himself up too much because Flintoff was really on top of his game early in the series. ”And as we saw here in 2005, he busted all our chops,” he said of Flintoff, whop has been cleared to play in the fifth and final Ashes Test at Oval on August 20.
Hughes admitted that Flintoff may be the best he has confronted in his short career. ”If you look back a couple of months with Freddie he’s bowled beautifully throughout the whole series,” Hughes said. ”He’s one of the best bowlers, if not the best bowler I’ve faced. ”But you look back at South Africa you had the likes of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel and Makhaya Ntini come very hard at me there,” the young opener added.
—–Agencies