Second, he would have faced stiff competition from Ian Salisbury and Chris Schofield. First, it would have taken him four years to become a fair dinkum Pom. Warne, it seems, was so disillusioned with the way he was ostracised after his dalliance with diuretics that he contemplated fleeing Australia, settling in Hampshire, the county he will captain next season, and qualifying for England. Quite how unhappy, however, was not evident until the Spin chanced across a story in the Sunday Times. Warne learned last week that his year-long ban from cricket-related activities extended to Victoria's pre-season launch, where a bonza dinner of spinach-based rotolo and chicken breast stuffed with vegetables was on the menu. The point is this: the Spin knows what Shane Warne must be going through, and has every sympathy with him after the latest episode in his post-drug-taking-fiasco-I-blame-my-mum humiliation. Only yesterday it sat through an evening of amateur dramatics in Shropshire, but - earlier than usual, and perhaps a little harshly - it digresses. 'I don't know how you Indians live here!' - The New Zealand opener Lou Vincent cottons on to the fact that temperatures on the subcontinent are a little higher than back home. O o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o No, the man in question is Adam Gilchrist, who quietly compiled an 84-ball century at the other end just to prove the point. Not Brian Lara, whose 375 against England at Antigua in 1993-94 contained no sixes not Sachin Tendulkar, whose highest Test score is 217 not Michael Vaughan, who has a problem in the nervous 190s. Perhaps the greatest compliment we can pay him is that only one other player in the world could have batted so dominantly, so violently, for so long. ДЇor sheer stamina (Hayden was in for ten hours and 22 minutes), muscular strokeplay (he launched 11 sixes, many of them straight down the ground off the medium-pacers), clean-hitting (Steve Waugh called it the cleanest he had ever seen), and utter remorselessness (his first real mistake came on 337) - for all these qualities, Hayden's innings is up there with the very, very best. Hayden didn't just take the candy - he took the baby too, and the pram. It's also a fact of life that hundreds of Test batsmen have come across the baby throughout their careers, but have failed to take the candy. It's a fact of life that Test triple-centuries aren't made on minefields against world-class attacks. The candy-from-a-baby school of thought is clear on the matter: Zimbabwe are poor (remove Heath Streak and their attack went into the game with a total of 75 Test wickets at over 40 each) Perth is no place for most tourists (of Australia's seven defeats in 31 Tests there, five have been against West Indies) and Hayden had the best of the conditions after Streak put Australia in.Д«ut this is too simplistic. Just how good was his world-record 380 against Zimbabwe at Perth last week? What would Bradman average if he were playing today? Would Mike Brearley be so revered if he had ever led England against West Indies? And how much bounce and volume does Mark Nicholas's coiffure really have before the Channel 4 make-up experts get to work? To this list we can now add the Matthew Hayden Question. One of the great joys of cricket is its endless stream of speculation.

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