Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

British Guiana where the tropical vegetation and local enthusiasm again created an indelible impression. ‘Outside the ground there is a lovely avenue of samoy trees, and the branches were packed with natives, looking like so many monkeys peeping through the leaves.’ It was a remark which in other times and circumstances would have brought a severe reprimand and ban of several matches from a match referee, but in the context of early twentieth-century colonialism, it was innocuous enough. Such is the intensity of present-day tours that players often have little opportunity to see anything beyond grounds, roads and airports. But in a more leisured age, while the amateurs were being entertained at Government House, Hayes and Thompson and perhaps Moss were left to their own devices. They were able to absorb something of the local atmosphere; they took a drive into the country and observed: This place is below the level of the sea and they are obliged to have large trenches in nearly every street. Some of them look very pretty the water being covered with lovely lilies. Coming to a little village called Providence 6 we saw a native funeral which was an interesting sight. About a hundred black girls followed the hearse, all being dressed up in pure white with a purple sash around them. . . . Coming home, our driver nearly pitched us into one of the trenches, and then the police pulled us up for not having lights, but kindly excused us on finding who we were. So altogether we had a good time. The personable Hayes was, on this trip and others, an ideal tourist. Despite the social gaps between the professionals and the amateurs, unlike a number of his contemporaries and successors, he was neither a misfit nor a maverick and fitted in to the touring ethos, as demonstrated by the aristocratic exchange of correspondence between the tour manager and Surrey chairman recorded in the club minutes: Overseas Trips and Chaos at The Oval 47 6 The ‘little village called Providence’ is, of course, now the site of a modern cricket stadium, one of a number purpose-built for the 2007 World Cup.