Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

Chapter Six Failure in Australia, Success at Home Bouncebackability Iain Dowie Australia: 1907/08 The outward journey on the Ophir was some way from being the ultimate in luxury. Jack Hobbs, writing almost thirty years later, recalls that it was ‘quite inferior to the ships used in the present day for pleasure cruises’. He and Hayes shared a cabin in the forward part of the ship ‘where the motion of the vessel could be experienced to the full.’ As in South Africa three winters earlier, the tour was not a successful one for Hayes. He reflects: ‘This trip although a most enjoyable one was a very unsuccessful one for me until just on Xmas and then got 98 & 50 in consecutive matches, but afterwards was played but little.’ He added that there was little chance of practice and he never had the opportunity to play his own game. In the first match against Western Australia at Perth, he was lbw for nought, the only such score in an MCC total of 402 which was sufficient to win the match by an innings and 134 runs. Eight against South Australia and four against Victoria, batting at No.8, was followed by 12 against Queensland and 13 against an Australian XI at Brisbane. He found the heat in Queensland ‘terrible’, up to 112°F, 44°C. New South Wales he found rather more comfortable where, as other tourists before and since, he thought the Sydney Cricket Ground the finest in the world: ‘Wickets, fielding, stand accommodation, banks and dressing rooms all perfection.’ By comparison he was less impressed by Queensland and empathised sufficiently with the following poem to include it in 61