Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

1900 Now something of a local celebrity, Hayes was invited to distribute the shields and medals for the South London Auxiliary Sunday School Union Cricket Association, on 3 March. The season began on Easter Monday with a fixture against W.G.Grace’s London County, formed the previous year. It was, said Hayes, ‘like playing in winter’ and was probably very little different in most of the subsequent seasons in which he represented his county against the short-lived first-class side in what were usually back-to-back home and away fixtures which preceded the more competitive matches in the County Championship. Without Key, Surrey fell to seventh in the Championship, despite winning only one fewer match than in 1899: Hayes played regularly again, batting mostly at No.3, behind Abel and Brockwell, easily reaching the thousand runs milestone in Championship matches, but his bowling was scarcely called upon. He recorded his first century in a Championship fixture – 150 against Worcestershire at The Oval. His second-wicket partnership of 272 with Bobby Abel set a new county record for this wicket. Abel eventually accumulated 221, and Lockwood 104 not out in a total of 495 for five declared. No one else reached even double figures and the eclipse of Hayward, who scored just five, was a cartoonist’s delight. The Sun was cautiously optimistic about Hayes’ future prospects. It reported: That there is a big career before him is rather more than likely. That he has any amount of pluck he proved in 1896 when an unknown man, so to speak, he compiled an innings of 62 for Surrey against the Australians. At the time the youngster was rather inclined to suffer from that dreadful complaint known as a ‘swelled head’, but constant association with Surrey professionals (about the most level-headed lot in the country) and further experience has quite cured him of the tendency. There is not the variety about his cricket that one associates with Abel or Hayward, but his driving is very hard and clean. It is not easy to justify the accusation of conceit. Certainly the scrapbooks show evidence of self-confidence and resentment at non-selection in the early years, but that is some way from having an exaggerated idea of one’s own ability implied by 32 Coaching in South Africa and then a County Stalwart