Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

his scrapbook. Banjo Paterson it is not, though the atmospherics are not dissimilar: The Bushman’s Farewell Queensland, thou art a land of pests For flies and fleas one never rests E’n now mosquitoes round me revel In fact they are the very devil, Sandflies and hornets just as bad. Stunted timber, thirsty plains, Parched up deserts, scanty rains, Rivers here you can’t sail ships on And nigger women without shifts on, Humpies, huts and wooden houses And nigger men who won’t wear trousers. To stay in thee, O land of mutton I would not give a single button; But bid thee now a long farewell, Thou scorching sunburnt land of Hell. He was unhappy that captain A.O.Jones did not give him a chance in any of the Test matches ‘which disappointed me greatly’. In view of his form, he may not have had much of a case for inclusion, but he was the only member of the party not to play in a Test match. His fellow tourist Sydney Barnes, writing to Hayes almost half a century later, took the view that he should have been played and drew a parallel with his own treatment when he was omitted from the England side after a match-winning performance. Be that as it may, his returns in eleven first-class matches of 230 runs at an average 16.42, and five wickets for 193 runs off 46 six-ball overs, tell their own sad story. Even his highest score, 98 before a crowd of 12,000 at Albert Park, Melbourne, against ‘A Victorian XI’, was later diminished by Wisden ’s report that ‘the match was not played very seriously.’ It was, therefore, a glaring case of unfulfilled potential and while Hayes was honest enough about his own shortcomings, he did not hold back with criticism of selection in other areas, nor of the umpiring. The following post-tour interview appeared in The Sportsman , under the heading ‘A Chat with Hayes’: Australia has been reckoned the graveyard of many cricketing reputations. Under the burning sun, upon adamantine and 62 Failure in Australia, Success at Home