Matthew Hayden has warned England’s batsmen they face a torrid examination from master leg-spinner Shane Warne on a cracking Adelaide Oval pitch in Friday’s second Ashes Test.
Opening batsman Hayden, who regularly stands at slip when Warne comes into the attack, believes he will be particularly tough work for the left-handers, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, out of the foot marks late in the Test.
The mercurial Warne has taken 51 wickets in 12 Adelaide Tests at 29,20 with a best of 6-80 against the West Indies last year.
The ground curator has said the Adelaide pitch will progressively crack open during the course of the Test, ideal bowling conditions for Test cricket’s leading wicket taker with 689 scalps.
”Even though Warney has had a tremendous amount of success in Brisbane over the years, he comes into his own in the southern state venues,” Hayden told a press conference on Wednesday.
”He’ll turn the ball prodigiously on this venue and he’ll get a lot of up and down movement as well.
”I wouldn’t like to be a left-hand batter facing Warne on this track; I really believe he’s going to be hard work.”
The tourists are coming off a 277-run hiding from the Ashes opener in Brisbane on Monday.
England coach Duncan Fletcher says he intends playing both left-arm spinners Ashley Giles and Monty Panesar in the second Test, but that holds little fear for Hayden.
”It wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t think the Australian batting line-up has got a lot of threat with either of those two players. It’s not something that I believe we’re overly concerned about,” he said.
”Notoriously here [Adelaide] it does tend to turn. It is a venue which does break up, especially with the heat we’ve got over the next few days.”
Hayden, a one-time skipper at Panesar’s Northamptonshire county, rates Monty highly as an emerging spin bowler.
”Monty Panesar is a beautiful flight bowler, very similar to New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori. I think he’s a really impressive bowler,” he said.
Hayden, who has scored two centuries and four half-centuries in 692 runs in seven Tests at Adelaide, said batting well is a vital part at the venue.
”This is a venue where you do have to follow the rules. It does get a bit up and down and can start playing tricks a little earlier in the Test match,” he said.
”Batting here is just such an important part, whatever you do first here is so crucial to the game.”
The Adelaide Oval is a high-scoring ground with the Australians amassing 500-plus in three of their last four Tests at the venue with four batsmen scoring double-centuries — West Indies’ Brian Lara (226) last year, Justin Langer (215) against New Zealand in 2004 and Ricky Ponting (242) and Indian Rahul Dravid (233) in the 2003 Test loss to India.
Hayden, who scored 21 and 37 in Brisbane, discounted any suggestion that the Australians will be down a notch after their dominating performance in Brisbane where they did not enforce the follow-on after leading by 445 runs on the first innings.
”We’ve already acknowledged the fact that it was a good convincing win, but to me our attitude remains that we are still pretty much second; it’s carried us through now for 14 months [since the last Ashes] that we have a point to prove.
”That hungry mentality is still within our grasp and we want to make sure and to continue that process through the rest of this series.” — Sapa-AFP