Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

The playing field is a monotonous study of brick red, broken only by the strip of greenish-brown matting spread over the wicket. After a few overs the ball takes on the colour of the outfield, and players unused to these conditions find it difficult, especially if a dusty wind is blowing, to follow its flight. Such a wicket is the googly expert’s paradise, for the ball nips very quickly from the pitch, and men like Faulkner, Vogel, Schwartz and White can effect an abnormal break. The outfield is as true and fast as a billiard table. Surprise is often expressed that a turf wicket has not been laid down in Johannesburg. As the rainy season in the Transvaal coincides with the cricket season, a turf wicket on some occasions would be unfit for play for weeks on end. But the red-brick soil has such marvellous recuperative powers that the ground may be deluged in the morning and be perfectly fit for play three hours later. Natives are not admitted as spectators to matches at the Wanderers’ ground, but at Cape Town, where the MCC men will have a turf wicket provided for them, the black population take a keen interest in the game, and utter weird exclamations of surprise and admiration when Sinclair and Nourse are in hitting mood. In Durban the Indian population are enthusiastic followers of the game. Decked out in their gaudiest habilements, they squat round in groups and watch every stroke with the closest attention. Hayes played in 37 first-class matches in this season, the most appearances he made in an English summer. This may therefore be a place to reflect on the life of a busy Surrey professional in the Edwardian era, and the stamina required to support it. Of the 37 matches, all of three days’ duration, 31 were for Surrey and six for other sides; three of these were ‘big’ matches – a Test match at The Oval, Gentlemen versus Players at Lord’s in mid-July and the champion county game in September. He played against the Australian tourists five times. His first match started on 3 May and the last, at Bray near Dublin, ended on 20 September. His matches were spread over 21 weeks, and in 16 of those weeks he played in two games. Of the total of 111 possible days’ play, he lost nine, either when matches were finished in two days or when a full day was washed out. On the field of play he had 65 innings, 28 of which lasted for an hour or more; he sent down just over 350 six-ball overs in 42 innings, fifteen times bowling ten or more overs in an Failure in Australia, Success at Home 72