Thomas Hayward (21 March 1835 – 21 July 1876) was an English cricketer who was generally reckoned to be one of the outstanding batsmen of the 1850s and 1860s. In the early 1860s, he and Robert Carpenter, his county colleague, were rated as the two finest batsmen in England. Richard Daft was among those ranking them as equal first, though George Parr reckoned Carpenter the better of the two.