Matthew Hayden's Diary

Saturday

G'day everyone! Look, I know that's kind of my catchphrase now, since the old Haydos stint on TMS last pommie summer. At least, they called it a bloody summer - wasn't much like any sort of summer a Queenslander gets involved with! 

'G'day everyone' I'd say, as I was introduced for my expert stints by Aggers or Blowers or some other bloody pom. The pommies liked it too. 'How would you have dealt with Jimmy Anderson or Stuart Broad or some other bloody medium pace rubbish,' Aggers or Blowers or another English twit who'd barely played a Test match would ask me.

'Ah look mate,' I'd tell them, 'when you've got that baggy green on your head, you're pretty ready for that kind of half-track garbage they're serving up. I'd just stick me chest out and smash the weak-minded pommie bastards like always.'

Anyways, that was then. The old Haydos has consigned the famous Gray-Nicolls to the garage mate. I've got the boardies on and the Matthew Hayden Cookbook out and the barbie fired up! Bit of marinading going on. See, this morning I cast the old boat upon the waters of Moreton Bay. 'Come unto me, Moreton Bay bugs', I said,' and all the fishes of the sea'. Then I'm straight on the mobile. 'Roy mate', I say. 'The Lord has giveth plentifully, so get yourself over mate. And don't be talking to Kelly if you're there before I am!'

When I'm out walking around the city, people see the famous Haydos shoulders sticking out above the crowd and they say to me, 'mate, what's it like now you've not got the Baggy Green on your head 200 days of the year?'

I let 'em in to a little secret. I still wear it, mate. Still put the old creams on too. Have a little bat in the back yard. Kelly's the bowler now. Made 375 the other day. I gave her some fearsome stick, but she kept running in, bless her. Fear in her eyes there was, as Haydos came down the track towards her. I was just starting to think about getting that bloody record back from Lara when I had to pick the nippers up from school, just like a regular Aussie Joe in his AIS-issue thongs. Still Lara only did it against the weakling poms, which hardly counts in my book. 

'Smell that Kell?' I said to her as I walked down the bloody track at her. 'That's your house burning down, that is...'

'You've left the bloody barbie on again, you great daft Aussie sod,' she said. 

That's why I love her. That and the fact she bowls like a bloody pom! G'day mates!