Hayden placed among the all-time cricket greats

Hayden8217;s one-day performances put him 18th in the all-time ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen with a career-high rating of 854 points,a tally that puts him level with New Zealand8217;s Glenn Turner and just behind Sri Lanka8217;s Aravinda de Silva.

To put this in perspective,only 25 batsmen in the history of the game have amassed 900 rating points or more in Test cricket while just 20 have passed the 850-point mark in ODIs.

Hayden8217;s achievements in the game are remarkable. In 103 Tests he scored 8,625 runs at an average of 50.73,including 30 centuries and 29 fifties.

His highest score of 380 against Zimbabwe at the WACA in 2003 was a world record at the time and at his best he was an impossibly aggressive and mentally strong player who loved to dominate bowling through brute force.

Hayden twice scored centuries in four successive Tests,putting him in an exclusive club of just three batsmen who have achieved that feat the others being Don Bradman and Ken Barrington and he passed the 1,000-run mark in a calendar year on five occasions.

He played 161 ODIs,scoring 6,133 runs at an average of 43.80. An obvious highlight was when he smashed 10 sixes on his way to an unbeaten 181 against New Zealand in the last ODI of the 2006-07 Chappell-Hadlee series.

Then,later in 2007 he was the leading run-scorer at the ICC Cricket World Cup in the West Indies,knocking off 659 runs at an average of 73.22.

Indeed,2007 was a great year for the Queenslander which resulted in him winning the ODI Player of the Year at the prestigious ICC Awards.

This accolade was made all the more significant considering a year earlier he was not even in the Australia one-day team.

All-time ICC Test Player Rankings as of 14 January 2009

1 Don Bradman AUS 961 v India

2 Len Hutton ENG 945 v West Indies

3=Jack Hobbs ENG 942 v Australia

3=Ricky Ponting AUS 942 v England

5 Peter May ENG 941 v Australia

6=Clyde Walcott WI 938 v Australia

6=Viv Richards WI 938 v England

6=Garry Sobers WI 938 v India

6=Kumar Sangakkara SL 938 v England

10=Matthew Hayden AUS 935 v England

10=Jacques Kallis SA 935 v New Zealand

12=Mohammad Yousuf PAK 933 v West Indies

13=Graeme Pollock SA 927 v Australia

13=Everton Weekes WI 927 v New Zealand

15=Dudley Nourse SA 922 v England

15=Doug Walters AUS 922 v South Africa

17=Neil Harvey AUS 921 v South Africa

17=Michael Hussey AUS 921 v West Indies

19=Denis Compton ENG 917 v Australia

20=Sunil Gavaskar IND 916 v England.

All-time ICC ODI Player Rankings as of 14 January 2009

1 Viv Richards WI 935 v Pakistan

2 Zaheer Abbas PAK 931 v New Zealand

3 Greg Chappell AUS 921 v New Zealand

4 David Gower ENG 919 v New Zealand

5 Dean Jones AUS 918 v West Indies

6 Javed Miandad PAK 910 v Sri Lanka

7 Brian Lara WI 908 v Pakistan

8=Desmond Haynes WI 900 v New Zealand

8=Gary Kirsten SA 900 v Australia

10 Allan Lamb ENG 897 v Pakistan

11 Gordon Greenidge WI 895 v India

12 Sachin Tendulkar IND 887 v Zimbabwe

13 Michael Bevan AUS 885 v England

14 Kepler Wessels AUS 872 v Sri Lanka

15=Michael Hussey AUS 863 v New Zealand

15=Graham Gooch ENG 863 v Pakistan

17 Aravinda de Silva SL861 v Pakistan

18=Matthew Hayden AUS 854 v India

18=Glenn Turner NZ 854 v Sri Lanka

20 Mark Waugh AUS 852 v New Zealand. PTI