Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

In the third week of July 4 , he added 102 runs to his overnight score before lunch on the second day of Surrey’s home match with Yorkshire off, among others, Rhodes and Hirst. There is a press cutting in the scrapbook, on which he does not comment, to the effect that, ‘the bowling was far superior to that which yielded the slim Surreyite his [then] record, 273 not out at Derby,’ and ‘while sacrificing nothing of his characteristic dash, he was always playing good, sound cricket, which lost nothing in attractiveness from the unwonted restraint.’ It was, however, a sad summer for Hayes in that his mother died, having been unwell for some time. As a result he missed the match against Sussex at Brighton, towards the end of July. West Indies with Lord Brackley: 1905 For the early part of 1905, Hayes was able to secure himself two separate but related jobs, firstly as one of two professionals (the other being George Thompson of Northamptonshire, who had begun his career as an amateur) on Lord Brackley’s tour of the West Indies 5 and secondly as correspondent for The Sportsman on that tour. He summarised it all as ‘a glorious trip some of the islands being perfectly lovely.’ The side comprised thirteen players in all; they took with them John Moss of Nottinghamshire, as Overseas Trips and Chaos at The Oval 43 4 Earlier in July, appearing for the Players against the Gentlemen in a high scoring game, he stumped J.H.Hunt for 128 off the bowling of Sam Hargreave, when the professionals’ captain, Dick Lilley handed him the gloves in the latter stages of the amateurs’ innings. He took one other stumping in his career, off Len Braund in Western Australia in 1907/08, when he shared the wicketkeeping duties with his captain A.O.Jones in the last match of MCC’s tour. 5 Lord Brackley (Hon John Francis Granville Scrope Egerton), who was aged 32 at the start of the tour, was the eldest son of the third Earl of Ellesmere. Wisden gave him only four lines of obituary, but his career reads so like a parody of an Edwardian sporting aristo, that it deserves to be better known. He was educated at Eton, but seems not to have been in the Eleven. His only first-class match before this tour was for MCC against Nottinghamshire at Lord’s in 1898, a rain-affected match in which only 21 overs were delivered, all on the first day, when he neither batted nor bowled. Usually reported as a middle-order batsman, his batting average in twelve first-class matches between 1898 and 1905 was 14.00. Shortly after returning from the tour he married Lady Violet Lambton, the eldest daughter of the fourth Earl of Durham. He was appointed MVO in 1909, an honour in the personal gift of the sovereign. He served as an officer in the Scots Guards in the Boer War and the Great War. He was MCC president in 1920 and later a senior steward of the Jockey Club, being a well-known racehorse owner of his day. He succeeded his father as fourth Earl in 1914, inheriting country estates at Brackley in Northamptonshire and in Berwickshire, and industrial estates in Lancashire and Cheshire with collieries, coke works and wharves. The family owned a house in Bayswater, with a picture gallery which included several Raphaels, Titians and Rembrandts. This was damaged twice by enemy action in 1941, but many of the pictures had been removed elsewhere. When he died in 1944, he was succeeded by his son who was in a German prisoner-of-war camp at the time.