Revealed: How Australian cricket hero Matthew Hayden’s record-breaking innings cost media tycoon Kerry Packer $4MILLION
- Matthew Hayden’s 380 led to ratings slump for Channel Nine, new book claimed
- Australia saw off Zimbabwe by innings and 175 runs but viewers weren’t hooked
- ‘It was the Hayden 380 he claimed cost him $4million,’ ex-cricket chief recalled
- Conversations in new excerpts said to show magnate’s extraordinary influence
Australian batting legend Matthew Hayden cost media tycoon Kerry Packer $4million fifteen years ago, a new book has claimed.
The revelation comes after another excerpt from the book entitled Bradman & Packer: The Deal That Changed Cricket – showed how Packer demanded Australian batsman Mike Hussey be rushed into the 2005 Ashes side.
Ex-Cricket Australia Chairman Bob Merriman revealed how Packer lamented a ratings slump during a Test match against Zimbabwe two years earlier.
Australian batting legend Matthew Hayden cost media tycoon Kerry Packer (pictured) $4million fifteen years ago, a new book has claimed
In the first Test of 2003, Hayden scored a then-record 380 runs as Australia trounced the opposition by an innings and 175 runs.
But Merriman said the one-sided contest did not keep viewers glued to their screens at a time in the day when Packer was struggling for ratings during other programs.
‘It was the Matthew Hayden 380 that he claimed cost him $4million. The match was in the last week of the ratings period and all his good programs weren’t on because of the three-hour time difference,’ Merriman recalled in the book.
‘And that week he went down the gurgler on ratings like you wouldn’t believe, and he’s out there trying to sell for the next year.
‘I don’t know how he made up the $4 million, but his ratings figures disappeared, because nobody was watching Australia versus Zimbabwe, even though Hayden was making 380.’
Merriman also revealed how Packer was highly critical of the then-novel T20 format – even though the media magnate had led the charge in one-day cricket in the 1970s.
‘This T20 cricket is no f****** good,’ Packer is claimed to have said to Merriman.
In the first Test of 2003 Hayden recorded a historic 380-run innings as Australian trounced the opposition by an innings and 175 runs, but ex-Cricket Australia chairman Bob Merriman said the one-sided contest did not keep viewers glued to their screens at a time in the day when Packer was struggling for ratings during other programs
‘When do I make a dollar? The batsmen change on the ground; there’s no time; there’s a small lunch break; there’s no tea break; there’s no drinks break.’
Merriman, now 84, told of how Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland shopped around the T20 format to pay-TV networks.
The conversations reported in journalist Daniel Brettig’s book are said to show the extraordinary influence the billionaire media tycoon had before he died in 2005.
The conversations reported in journalist Daniel Brettig’s book are said to show the extraordinary influence the billionaire media tycoon (pictured) had before he died in 2005