I only saw Marto batting for a few balls but I have never seen him so brutal. In the initial stages of his heyday, around about the time of the last Ashes! tour to England, Marto had developed this ability to become one of the players that surrounded him. The peak of his form was his protean formlessness. He could become Michael Bevan. A right hand batsmen playing the shot of a left hander to such a degree of precision that you could not tell them apart – the way he could manipulate his elements and twist the lines within which his arms operated was an incrdible talent. He would often take on the aspect of either Waugh twin. Even as recently as India you will probably remember he basically was Steve Waugh. It’s Marto’s formlessness that provides him with his strongest form. He learns pitches, gets to know grass and disappears into fields. He struggled when the New Zealander’s defined a distinct Martyn form for him a few years back, setting fields that said ‘this is how Damien Martyn bats’ these are his areas. It took him some time to shake the form that he found himself captured within. Since India he’s been shedding it. Last night marked the complete end point of Marto’s form. That wasn’t Marto out there, that was Matthew Hayden. Brutal. The finessing right hander had become the most brutal left handed batsmen the world has seen. He was still holding the bat like a right hander but the shots he was playing were elementally Hayden. Hayden in his heyday. Pre-pillow. Out of the 2 or so shots I saw I have been able to discern an entire series of massive and brilliant innings for the churning sea god we will, for want of a better nomenclature, still call Marto.