Matthew Hayden masterclass on sweep shot. When Hayden asked Harbhajan Singh, ‘how is my ability now?’

It was Border, along with the coach Bob Simpson, who had kickstarted Hayden’s tryst with the sweep all those years back. In fact, the seed was planted not in some four-day camp ahead of the series but a decade back in 1993.

Australia’s Alex Carey plays a sweep shot during the third day of the second cricket Test match between India and Australia in New Delhi. (AP)

“The seed was planted in 1993 when I was working with Allan Border and Bob Simpson. Border was a very good sweeper as well and I got the foundation of it from him: understanding when and how, what lines to play, and picked his mind on that,” Hayden had once told this correspondent. “Have you thought about the sweep shot?’ They taught me the basics of it – keeping the head in line of the ball, hitting through the ball and also when not to hit it.”

And then, two years before the famous Test series, came a seminal spin’s camp in 1999 in Chennai where Hayden ran into the Indian greats Erapalli Prasanna and Bishen Singh Bedi. That changed Hayden’s game against spin to another level.

“It [the spin camp] was a very important camp. Based on that experience, I was able to formulate a game plan and batting strategy,” Hayden said. “Importantly, I came to understand the mindset of a spinner. I practised a variety of shots, tried out lots of options and developed my game against spin.” Incidentally, Todd Murphy, the off spin bowler who troubled India at Nagpur, too had been to a spin camp in Chennai last year. But back to Hayden.

Clarke joined calls for Matthew Hayden, who has 30 Test centuries including two in India, to be brought into the Aussie support staff.

Prasanna had once shared what he and Bedi had taught and observed in Hayden.

“We told him, ‘either you take the ball on the full or wait’. And we also talked about his sweep shot,” Prasanna said. “Some batsmen usually take the left leg out and expose the middle stump. We asked Hayden to get in line a bit more before he plays that shot forcefully. He was obviously a very keen student.” Hayden would pull out the sweep when the ball began to turn, to put doubts in the umpire’s minds in the pre-DRS era that it could be missing the stumps, when it hit the pad.

Hayden’s attacking game against spin began to take shape. “I had a solid defensive strategy but what I came prepared to was to have an attacking strategy with that sweep. I prepared hard for that and sweeping was a strategy. It has been copied around the world now really. Most left-handers now look to play that sweep as a go-to shot to scoring,” Hayden said.

The spin camp wasn’t the end of it. Just before he came to India in 2001, Hayden would ask Ross Harris, then the curator at the Allan Border Field in Queensland, to replicate Indian conditions for his sweep-shot practice. Days were spent honing the shot.Hayden also opened the bat-face bit more than what he would do in Australia – “you tend to close the bat’s face in Australia because you don’t want anything angling across the bat and get caught out in the slips”.

Matthew Hayden. (Express Archives)

Hayden’s sweep shot too was a touch different from the likes that Joe Root, say, employs. The bat-parallel-to-the-ground sweep, as played often by Root who sweeps the entire arc from wide mid-on to backward square-leg after crouching really low with the bat coming from the side of the ball, almost.

Hayden would smash the ball from the top; the bat would come crashing down on the ball to negate the bounce. Like England’s former captain Graham Gooch, who once swept India out of the 1987 world cup, would do.

“You can handle the extra bounce with this movement – swooping down from the top. It helps keep the ball down somewhat and this top-to-bottom sweep also allows a batsman to rotate strike. You can access the areas safely,” Gooch once told this newspaper.

Matthew Hayden batting against Mumbai Team at CCI in 2004. (Express Photo)

“If you want to hit the ball for a six, then you go from low to high with the bat flow,” Gooch says. “The bat also comes out differently for a lap or when you want to keep it along the ground and where you want to hit it – behind square or front of square. So, all these decisions you have to take in the semi-premeditative shot and based on what comes out of the hand. You can’t be lazy with this shot.”

Gooch has a length in mind to pull out the sweep shot. “My principle was that the ball I tried to sweep is the same I would play a forward defensive to. The kind of ball that can potentially hit the splice of the bat, too, you would want to lap or sweep them. Also, important to mix things up. Not be unidimensional with the sweep. In my career, I have tried to play a mixed game to the turning ball – sweep, occasional use of the feet, backfoot nudges, laps. I didn’t look to attack all the time – barring that ’87 semi-final game.”

One final story for the road, from Hayden. In that 2001 series, he played a tour game and came against Harbhajan Singh, but interestingly he says he chose to hide the fact that he could sweep and attack. It was a game against India A in Nagpur where Harbhajan picked five wickets in the match (2 and 3 respectively in both innings) and Hayden hit 49 and 37.

“My battles with Harbhajan [Singh] started in a warm-up game. I didn’t want to give him any indication of my abilities. So, I had a very defensive game plan and I wanted to see if I could survive against him without revealing my arsenal. He came up to me and politely mentioned just how disappointed he was that a player of my credentials was even considered to play for Australia. I took all that on board and he actually dismissed me that day as well,” he once told Bcci.tv. “I think off his second or third ball in the Test, I came down the wicket and hit him with ease over extra-cover and asked him, ‘How’s my ability now?’”