Sydney Barnes

Sydney Francis Barnes (19 April 1873 – 26 December 1967) was an English professional cricketer who is regarded as one of the greatest bowlers of all time. He was right-handed and bowled at a pace that varied from medium to fast-medium with the ability to make the ball both swing and break from off or leg. In Test cricket, Barnes played for England in 27 matches from 1901 to 1914, taking 189 wickets at 16.43, one of the lowest Test bowling averages ever achieved. In 1911–12, he helped England to win the Ashes when he took 34 wickets in the series against Australia. In 1913–14, his final Test series, he took a world record 49 wickets in a Test series, against South Africa.

Barnes was unusual in that, despite a very long career as a top-class player, he spent little more than two seasons in first-class cricket, briefly representing Warwickshire (1894 to 1896) and Lancashire (1899 to 1903). Instead, he preferred league and minor counties cricket for mostly professional reasons. He had two phases playing for his native Staffordshire in the Minor Counties Championship from 1904 to 1914 and from 1924 to 1935. He played exclusively for Saltaire Cricket Club in the Bradford League from 1915 to 1923. In his wider career from 1895 to 1934, he variously represented several clubs in each of the Bradford, Central Lancashire, Lancashire and North Staffordshire leagues.

Early life

Barnes was born on 19 April 1873 in Smethwick, Staffordshire. He was the second son of five children whose father, Richard, lived nearly all of his life in Staffordshire, working for 63 years at the Muntz Metal Company His father did not play much cricket and Barnes was the only one of three brothers who ever "touched a bat or ball".

Work outside cricket

Outside cricket, Barnes worked as a clerk in a Staffordshire colliery until 1914, and later at Staffordshire County Council, where he became skilful in calligraphy.

Cricket career

1888 to 1894

Barnes's career began in 1888 when he was fifteen and played for a small club which had a ground behind the Galton Hotel in Smethwick. Soon afterwards, he joined Smethwick Cricket Club and played for its third team. He was taught to bowl off spin by Billy Bird, the Smethwick professional who had played for Warwickshire, and then taught himself to bowl leg spin. In due course, he was selected for the second team and had earned a place in the first team, playing in the Birmingham and District Premier League, at the start of the 1893 season. Instead, he joined Rishton Cricket Club in the Lancashire League where the pay was better than in any form of county cricket, largely because of match bonuses and collections. He played for Rishton until 1899.

Later in the 1894 season, Barnes was invited to play for Warwickshire, who were due to enter the County Championship in 1895. His debut was in a minor match against Cheshire at Edgbaston on 20–21 August. Barnes bowled only 8 overs, taking none for 27, and the match was drawn. On 23 August, Barnes made his first-class debut for Warwickshire against Gloucestershire at Clifton College Close Ground, except that he did not take the field as play was restricted by bad weather to just 72 overs of his team's first innings, in which they reached 102–2.

1895 to 1903

Barnes played only three more times for Warwickshire: twice in May 1895 and once in June 1896. He took just three wickets in these matches, having bowled 86 overs and conceded 226 runs. Barnes had been a fast bowler with Warwickshire but in his time at Rishton he reduced his pace to medium fast and experimented with spin. In August, he made his first-team debut for Lancashire and played in two County Championship matches against Sussex and Surrey but he had only moderate success with a best return of three for 99 against Surrey. He rejected an offer to join the Lancashire ground staff, preferring to remain in better-paid league cricket, which he could combine with full-time employment as a clerk in a Staffordshire colliery. Lancashire wanted Barnes to sign for them in 1902, but Barnes, always financially aware, was unsure, as he considered first-class county cricket to be "a great deal of hard work for relatively little money", and he liked his arrangement with Burnley supplementing his full-time job. Barnes's selection was a major surprise and considered to be "the most daring experiment in the history of the game". Australia levelled the series in the second Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground, winning by 229 runs although Barnes had figures of six for 42 and seven for 121. Monty Noble trumped Barnes's effort with seven for 17 and six for 60. Although successful, taking nineteen wickets in the two Tests to add to the thirteen in his previous seven first-class matches, Barnes was over-bowled. He injured a knee in the third Test at Adelaide Oval and missed the remainder of the tour. He later said he was still far short of his best at the time, but he had established himself as a world-class bowler.

Despite his differences with MacLaren, Barnes became a first team regular at Lancashire through the 1902 and 1903 seasons, producing several successful performances, although he was still troubled in 1902 by the knee injury sustained on tour. In 1903, Barnes was in dispute with Lancashire about winter employment and being "much over-bowled". Near the end of the season, Barnes took part in the Gentlemen v Players match but was unfit and could only bowl one over. Comments were made in the press that it was unfair of Barnes to "claim a fee and then not perform". Barnes thought it unfair that he should be paid the same as teammates who did much less work. Lancashire were paying him £3 a week in summer and £1 in winter, whereas in the Lancashire League he could get £8 plus bonuses for playing Saturdays only. Barnes tried to get more from Lancashire and refused to sign a contract for 1904. Lancashire called his bluff and dropped him from the team for their final match of the season. Barnes went back to the leagues and minor counties for good and never played in the County Championship again. In 1903, Barnes made 24 appearances and took 131 wickets at 17.85. He was ninth of those bowlers who took 100 wickets; his best analysis was eight for 37 and he had three ten-wicket matches. 1903 was the only season in which Barnes took 100 wickets in an English first-class season, although he did capture 104 wickets in South Africa in 1913–14.

1904 to 1914

Barnes joined Staffordshire in 1904 and played in the Minor Counties Championship until 1914. He combined this with weekend league cricket, returning to the Lancashire League for the 1904 and 1905 seasons to play for Church. In 1906, he moved to the North Staffordshire League and was with Porthill to 1914. Barnes did not play first-class cricket again for over four years until he joined an occasional team playing against the South African tourists in September 1907. He toured Australia the following winter and the bulk of his Test career was played from then till 1914. He made eight appearances for the Players in the prestigious Gentlemen v Players series during this period, culminating in the July 1914 match. In the second Test, which England won by 1 wicket, it was Barnes's batting that was crucial as he shared stands of 34 for the ninth wicket with Joe Humphries and an unbeaten 39 for the last with Arthur Fielder. When the tourists played Western Australia, Barnes shared a stand with George Gunn of over 200 for the fifth wicket while scoring 93, his personal best in first-class cricket.

In the 1909 season, Barnes played in the last three of England's five Tests against Australia. In the third Test at Headingley, he took six for 63 in Australia's second innings but England lost by 126 runs. The fourth Test at Old Trafford was drawn, Barnes taking five for 56 in the first innings. In the final Test at The Oval, Barnes took two wickets in each innings of another drawn match. In 1910, Barnes was made a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.

Barnes joined the MCC tour of Australia in 1911–12 and played in all five Tests. His first four victims were Warren Bardsley, Charles Kelleway, Clem Hill and Warwick Armstrong. When Frank Foster dismissed Victor Trumper and Barnes added Roy Minnett, the home side were reduced to 38 for six. Barnes took 39 wickets in the series with three five-wicket hauls.

In the 1912 Triangular Tournament, Barnes played in all six of England's Tests, three each against Australia and South Africa. His 49 wickets on the matting pitches used in this series remains the world record for wickets taken in a Test series. In the second Test at the Old Wanderers ground in Johannesburg, he became the first bowler to take more than 15 wickets in a Test with figures of eight for 56 and nine for 103 resulting in a match analysis of seventeen for 159.

Only Jim Laker's match analysis of nineteen for 90 in 1956 has since surpassed this feat in Test cricket.

Barnes took 189 Test wickets. His average of 16.43 and strike rate of 41.65 are the lowest amongst bowlers who have played in more than 25 Tests and taken more than 150 wickets, although Kagiso Rabada currently has a lower strike rate. His closest challenger is Alan Davidson, who took 186 wickets at 20.53. Barnes took his 150th Test match wicket in only his 24th Test, which is a world record. Next best are Waqar Younis and Yasir Shah (27 Tests each).

1915 to 1923

Barnes was 41 when the First World War began and so too old for military service. First-class cricket was shelved for the duration but league cricket continued and numerous top-class players including Jack Hobbs, Wilfred Rhodes and Frank Woolley signed up to play in the Bradford League. Barnes saw an advert placed by Saltaire Cricket Club in the Athletic News and applied for the role by saying: "Will I do?" From 1915 to 1923, he played exclusively and with great success for Saltaire. The club and their ground at Roberts Park had been founded in 1871 and they joined the Bradford League in 1905. They won the league three times (1917, 1918 and 1922) while Barnes played for them. On his debut in May 1915, he took eight for eight against Bowling Old Lane and followed that with all ten for fourteen against Baildon Green, including five wickets in five successive balls. In later seasons, he took all ten against Bowling Old Lane and Keighley.

Barnes knew full well his value to Saltaire and characteristically drove a hard bargain. There were several record crowd and gate receipt matches when he was playing, including one Priestley Cup final at Bradford Park Avenue, a first-class ground used by Yorkshire. Barnes started on £3 10s per match in 1915 plus travel and accommodation, though he did soon remove to Saltaire (and the club paid his removal costs). His match fee doubled in 1916 and had increased to £18 15s in 1922. Like all professionals operating in league cricket, he benefited from "pass the hat" crowd collections (performance rewards) at each game and, as an additional supplement, he secured a coaching role at Bradford Grammar School which is near Saltaire. Saltaire over-reached themselves somewhat and it took an effort to re-balance the books in the 1920s following Barnes's departure.

In total, Barnes took 904 wickets for Saltaire at an average of 5.26. He took a hundred wickets in a season five times, a rare feat in the Bradford League's history, and headed the bowling averages in every one of his nine seasons there. He had an average of under five in most seasons and even his highest was only seven, which is itself generally held to be a remarkable bowling average in any level of competition.

Fifteen years after Barnes left Saltaire, they signed the young Jim Laker, then a sixteen year old schoolboy who lived in nearby Baildon. Laker played for Saltaire through the 1938 to 1940 seasons. He joined the British Army in 1941 and spent the Second World War in Egypt. He did not develop his off break bowling skill until he joined the Army and at Saltaire he was recognised primarily as a promising batsman who was also a useful pace bowler. During that time, when he was attending a coaching class with Yorkshire at Headingley, Laker listened to a conversation between George Hirst and Herbert Sutcliffe who apparently did not often agree with each other about cricket, but Laker recalled Sutcliffe being in complete agreement with Hirst's view that "Sydney Barnes was the greatest bowler there has ever been and what's more the greatest bowler there ever will be". Around that time, Laker had watched Barnes, then in his sixties, when he guested in a Bradford League match. Laker recalled that Barnes's control of the ball was "still remarkable".

1924 to 1935

Barnes declined an opportunity to join the tour to Australia in 1920–21, when he was 47 years old. He wanted to take his family with him, but it soon became clear that he would have to pay their traveling expenses. He also made two first-class appearances for the Minor Counties in 1929 Barnes's final first-class appearance was for Wales against Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at Lord's in 1930.

Barnes was described as more than six feet tall and maintaining an erect posture with wide shoulders, a deep chest, long arms and strong legs – in John Arlott's view, "perfectly built to be a bowler". He bowled right arm fast-medium but also had what Arlott called "the accuracy, spin and resource of a slow bowler".

The great Australian batsman Clem Hill told Neville Cardus that, on a perfect wicket, Barnes could swing the new ball in and out "very late", could spin from the ground, pitch on the leg stump and miss the off. This is evidence of Barnes's ability to deploy maximum variety in the space of a single over. Cardus remarked on Barnes's creativity as "one of the first bowlers really to use the seam of a new ball and combine swing so subtly with spin that few batsmen could distinguish one from the other".

Cardus described Barnes's "splendid upright action, right arm straight over". He ran on easy strides. Wilfred Rhodes recalled that Barnes carried the ball in his left hand until, a couple of strides from delivery, he switched it to the right.

Personality

As for Barnes's controversial character, Cardus said that he was not an easy man to handle on the field of play because there was a "Mephistophelian aspect about him" in that (unlike the amateurs) he did not play cricket out of any "green field starry-eyed idealism".

Cardus said that Barnes was a hostile, attacking bowler.

Cardus said Barnes always made the batsman play the ball and Barnes himself said about later bowlers sending down so many balls the batsman need not play that, "I didn't. I never gave 'em any rest".

Barnes, said Cardus, was "relentless" and "blew a chill wind of antagonism", but he mellowed in full age and retirement. (Cardus, Wisden Obituary)

Hollowood cartoons

Bernard Hollowood drew two cartoons of Barnes, which appear in his book Cricket on the Brain. One depicts him leaping in the air as he appeals for a dismissal and with his index finger raised as though he himself is adjudicating on the appeal. It is entitled "A.N. Other lbw Barnes.... 0". John Arlott wrote in his review of the book for the 1971 Wisden: "... his two caricatures of S. F. Barnes would seem transcendent if they were not outweighed by his chapter on that great bowler which is a fine passage of cricket literature ... this is a book of many and well-cut facets."

Personal life

Barnes married Alice Maud Taylor (née Pearce) in 1903 and they had one child, a son called Leslie who took the photos for Wilfrid S. White's biography of Barnes. Barnes was Alice's second husband, following her divorce from George Taylor.

In later life, Barnes became friends with Pelham Warner, who was his exact contemporary, and they watched cricket together at Lord's.

Barnes died in 1967 at his home in Chadsmoor, Cannock, Staffordshire.

Awards and tributes

In the 1963 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, Barnes was selected by Neville Cardus as one of the "Six Giants of the Wisden Century". This was a special commemorative selection requested by Wisden for its 100th edition. The other five players chosen were Don Bradman, W. G. Grace, Jack Hobbs, Tom Richardson and Victor Trumper. Soon afterwards, writing in the May 1963 edition of The Cricketer, John Arlott published a tribute to Barnes which commemorated his 90th birthday. Arlott wrote that of those who played with or against Barnes, "(they) had no doubt that he stood alone – the greatest bowler that ever lived". In 2008, when the "ICC Best-Ever Test Championship Ratings" were published, Barnes's retrospective rating of 932 at the end of the 1913/14 series was the highest ever achieved. In 2009, Barnes was an inaugural member of the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

References

Sources

Cardus, Neville (1968). Wisden Obituaries in 1968 – Sydney Barnes. John Wisden & Co.
Gibbs, Peter (2012). A chill wind beyond the boundary. John Wisden & Co.
Hill, Alan (1998). Jim Laker. Andre Deutsch.