Last Updated on 2 weeks by Charbel Coorey

The 2024/25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) is taking the cricketing world by storm. Experts all around the world have given their predictions for the series. While India were recently whitewashed by New Zealand at home, Australia have not beaten India in a Test series since 2014/15.

Australia’s legendary batter Matthew Hayden gave his opinion on the series, focusing on the modern player’s ability to bat long. During an exclusive conversation with Arvind Kalyana Krishnan, the former opener gave his thoughts on Rohit Sharma and his recent tendency to take the aggressive route. It is to be noted that Rohit Sharma has been batting with a lot of intent of late, and has developed a habit of taking on the opposition bowlers early on. Despite him missing the first Test, a lot more is expected from the opener.

Hayden’s comments on modern day batting aged well with 17 wickets falling on the first day of the 2024/25 BGT. Australia crumbled to 67/7 in response to India’s 150, often looking clueless against Jasprit Bumrah and co. on a challenging Perth Stadium pitch.

Further on, while speaking to Arvind Kalyana Krishnan during a virtual meeting organised by 7 Network, Hayden also touched on the 2025 IPL Mega Auction clashing with the first Test in Perth. He drew light on how it would impact the individuals playing the first of the five-match Test series as well as coaches Justin Langer and Ricky Ponting.

It is to be noted that Hayden is currently with 7 Network, and will be working on the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25 with them.

Matthew Hayden interview: Batting in the modern era and possible IPL Auction distraction

Below is the entire conversation with Matthew Hayden.

Arvind Kalyana Krishnan: So my question to you is about Rohit Sharma. Rohit Sharma has started to take the aggressive route and this aggressive approach has worked in limited-overs cricket but didn’t work in the longest format of the game against New Zealand during their recent series. So what is your opinion on Rohit Sharma taking on the Australian bowlers and going the aggressive route in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy?

Matthew Hayden: Yeah, I’ve mentioned this before but see the thing is as a broadcaster what I’m looking forward to the most across the five-match Test series is to see how the modern batsman of the modern era kind of get over their hangover of playing short-format cricket over the past 12-18 months.

India do have the advantage because they have played a little more Test match cricket then what Australia has. So for my thing, because I guess hitting boundaries is a great drug to batsmen. Once you get that feeling of hitting boundaries…..It’s a really important part of building confidence and building through your innings, but as the old saying goes, you can’t score runs in the changing room, and when you think back to Indian batters in Australia that I eluded to this point with Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman as well with this point that they just face so many balls.

I mean Pujara in his 11 matches averaged 126 balls per innings……And when you think about his success story averaging 47 with just under a 1000 runs he just batted time, and you can’t tell me that Rohit Sharma is either “it’s not his fitness” or “it’s not his skill set”.

It ultimately comes back to the challenge that all these batters will have ahead of this series against all the world-class, either pace or spin attack. It’s to have the courage to bat session after session, ball by ball, over by over through the course of the five-day window, and that’s the modern challenge.

We go berserk on players that have all the style and charisma. Jake Fraser-McGurk is a great example in the shorter formats of the game. The fact that he hits these wonderful boundaries…..But he doesn’t hit anywhere near enough of those boundaries to be a really consistent contributor over time in the one-day format or even in the T20 format for that.

You know you’re judged on..…Your only commodity as a batsman is runs, and the most successful run-getters in this country tend to be those who bat for long time, and the most successful here can I remind everyone is Sachin Tendulkar. He scored 1800 runs in his 20 matches over here at an average of 53, with six hundreds and seven fifties. So there’s an almost shut case example of talent meets a more determined mindset. My favourite innings of Sachin Tendulkar was the Sydney Test match where he just refused to play a cover drive for almost two days to get 200 runs. It was a remarkable innings, and that’s the sort of character is required to get runs in this country.

Not someone that bats 30 balls and makes a glorious you know, 52 runs but doesn’t make an impact because he’s in the dressing room sipping soy lattes.

Arvind Kalyana Krishnan: Yes, now my second question to you is that the IPL Auctions will be coinciding with the first match. So do you think it will create any sort of impact on any players playing the match?

Matthew Hayden: Yeah (laughs) look, cricket is not in the business of producing robots. I mean the players are the number one stakeholders of the IPL and there’s a lot riding on this super auction, and players will inevitably need to deal with that distraction and those who do better than the others will have the competitive advantage.

Even our commentary box at Channel 7 will have its work cut out with Justin Langer and Ricky Ponting you know at the helm of two franchises. Ricky a new franchise [Punjab Kings]! So I’ll be making sure that we’re on track (smiles). I’ll be doing the marching orders to the boys to make sure that they’re focused on their jobs which is commentating for Channel 7 (smiles).