Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

In an interview with the Cricket Star , Hayes produces his thoughts on ‘bad patches’ of the kind which seem to have dogged his brief and intermittent international career ‘and recently experienced by David Denton of Yorkshire and Mr J.R.Mason of Kent.’ ‘It was an interview given in the spring,’ he comments ruefully, ‘but kept I suppose until I have a queer time myself.’ He openly and honestly enters into the psychology of it all and concludes that perhaps too much cricket is being played leading to what in later years would be called ‘burn-out’. A hundred years or so down the road, little if anything seems to have been done about it, apart from exacerbation in the wrong direction and the extension of the playing season for international cricketers to twelve months a year. He says: A year or two ago I remember I went completely off colour. The lack of success troubled me greatly and like many men in similar circumstances I suppose I got a trifle disappointed and down-hearted. And when a man does that (though there is every excuse for him after a long spell of bad luck in the field) it all tells against any renewal of his olden triumphs, against his driving away the cloud that is surrounding him. For such feelings engender a want of confidence in any man. And when a batsman or bowler, or even a fielder, begins his day at cricket without any confidence in himself, why, he might nearly as well keep off the field all together for all the good he is likely to be to his side. . . . even unknown to himself there is lurking within him somewhere that slight touch of indisposition which makes all the difference in the world between excellent success and all too frequent failure. Or it may be that he has ‘overtrained’ so to speak. He has had too much cricket. The exigencies of a long season of stern matches in the County Championship with other struggles wedged in between these, nowadays prove too much for many estimable cricketers. He is generally playing every day and all day from 1 May down to the end of September if he has been a prominent and regular member of a county eleven. Do you wonder that he has his off-days now and then – sometimes many of them too? Simplistic psychology perhaps, but words that will find an echo in the heart of many a professional sportsman. Failure in Australia, Success at Home 74