Lives in Cricket No 8 - Ernest Hayes

Preface Shortly after the publication of my biography of George Lohmann, I found myself being asked by a number of people what my next project was to be. When I replied that it would possibly be Ernest Hayes, the reaction, even from Surrey members and supporters with an interest in and knowledge of the history of the club, was, ‘Who?’ Yet Hayes played five hundred first-class matches for Surrey, a figure not approached by any current player and bettered by only five others. He scored 45 centuries for his county, and is now tenth in the all-time list, having this year moved down a place to accommodate the Ramprakash phenomenon. History recalls him as being overshadowed by Hobbs and Hayward, but that is by no means how contemporary commentators saw him. His contribution, usually at No.3 in the Surrey order, was a significant one and he still features in a number of partnership and other Surrey records. It is unlikely that the thought of a Hayes biography would have entered my head, had it not been for the depositing in the club archives of four scrapbooks by his family in the early nineties. They cover the whole of his playing career and provide a unique source of material for a chronicle of one who, in the words of the hymnologist, would have otherwise remained ‘unknown and unrewarded’. Professional cricket has not until recently been the best rewarded of sports and there is nothing that can be done to change that history, but perhaps due to that chance discovery, Hayes may become slightly less unknown. The scrapbooks, annotated with his own reminiscences, contain correspondence with a number of his distinguished contemporaries, and cover the whole of his first-class career and the bits before and afterwards. Although they are well maintained, the majority of the press items do not indicate the source and are not dated, except by season. Most, however, seem to be from The Sportsman , Sporting Times , Cricket Star, Wisden , Cricket magazine or local newspapers and the date can in a number of cases, be inferred from the context or the content of adjacent items. They 7