Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

improvement to Surrey’s ranking among the counties. The county had made no challenge at all to the dominance of the Northern counties in the Championship, as perhaps supporters may have hoped. Over his five seasons as coach, eight or nine new regular players were introduced into the Surrey first eleven; as at Leicestershire, these were mainly batsmen, perhaps reflecting Hayes’ principal skill as a player, but bowlers, essential to match-winning, had remained in short supply. Surrey’s second eleven finished the season in the leading group in the Minor Counties competition in all five of seasons when Hayes was coach. They were in second place in three of these. These sides included many of the younger players on the professional staff: for reasons which are no longer apparent, few of these players were converted into players of substance in the first team. Honor Oak and the Paxton Arms: 1933 to 1953 In 1933, almost as though he was finalising preparation for a ‘life after cricket’, Hayes took over as the licensee at the Paxton Arms hotel in West Norwood, which he ran with his wife Lily until his death twenty years later. The Paxton Arms was then an ordinary, south London pub, but is now a gastro-pub, re-built and re-named ‘The Mansion’ and shunted upmarket. Homecoming 113 Hayes was licensee of this West Norwood pub, then called the Paxton Arms, for twenty years till 1953.