Matthew Hayden has been in such imperious form over the last 12 months that it was a bit of a shock when he came out in the second innings at Cape Town and started scratching around like Jack Russell with muscles. Hayden hardly middled a thing on the fourth evening, especially off the quicker bowlers, but he lived to fight another day on 50 not out, and was much more fluent today before he stretched to feather a wide delivery from Jacques Kallis to Mark Boucher.

Our graphs show where Hayden scored his runs on each day, in what became the definitive innings of two halves. Yesterday he scored 44% of his runs (22 out of 50) behind square on the leg side. Most came involuntarily too, as a series of inside-edges just missed leg stump, and in all Hayden scored 78% of his runs (39 out of 50) on the leg side.

Today, that figure was only 43% (20 out of 46) and it was the same old Hayden, driving and pulling with muscular contempt. He scored his runs all round the wicket, with one notable exception: not one run came behind square on the leg side. Yesterday's fine-leg feast was today's famine

Hayden may have missed out on five centuries in consecutive Tests, but his startling form goes on: his first 13 Tests brought 536 runs at an average of 24; his last 16 have yielded 1791 at 74.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

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