Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

dominance. In a letter to the Daily Mail he wrote: ‘We haven’t won today; we didn’t even make a draw; we just lost. Had we played another three or four days, we should probably never have got Hayes out.’ Wisden had no hesitation in placing Hayes second only to Hayward in batting quality and the Cricket Star commented: ‘He is one of the most popular men Surrey ever played, not even excepting Abel or Lohmann or Shuter and in the Honor Oak district they speak of him with awe.’ Earlier in the season, he had enjoyed some success as a bowler, taking six for 48 against Derbyshire. A reader of the Cricket Star put it in context: In taking six Derbyshire wickets for 48 runs, E.Hayes accomplished the finest performance of the week. When it is considered that the match produced nearly 1,000 runs, that Lockwood’s ten wickets in the match cost over 170 and Lees’s one wicket 150 runs, the value of Hayes’s bowling will be seen. Among his six victims too were C.A.Ollivierre and Storer, so they were by no means a batch of poor wickets. He caused some amusement at Leyton: Cases of absent-mindedness are not unknown among cricketers, and Hayes did not create a record when, on his turn coming to go the wicket, he walked out of the pavilion at Leyton without his bat. But the spectators were naturally delighted when they saw his look of bewilderment on discovering that he had forgotten something of importance. Later in the season, at Beckenham, a lady spectator, said to be the wife of R.N.R.Blaker, the Kent amateur, had a lucky escape: . . . Hayes made a fine on-drive and the ball fell on a lady who was sitting in the tea pavilion. The lady might have been seriously hurt but the ball happened to drop on her watch and, although the watch was completely smashed its wearer was unharmed. 42 Overseas Trips and Chaos at The Oval