How Good Was Sydney F Barnes?

[peterhrt]

Barnes was a very late developer. His early record in league cricket was not quite as exceptional as it was made out to be.

Throughout Barnes' long career the most prestigious English league was the Lancashire League. His first stint in it lasted from 1895 until 1905, with a couple of seasons absent playing county cricket. Leading wicket-takers in the league during this period:

Moss 528 wickets @ 7.34. 4.8 wickets per match.
Hall 693 @ 8.54. 4.3 wpm.
Barnes 765 @ 8.91. 3.8 wpm.
Lancaster 849 @ 9.00. 4.1 wpm.
Riley 611 @ 9.28. 4.2 wpm.
Mee 651 @ 9.35. 3.5 wpm.
Hardstaff 502 @ 10.44. 3.7 wpm.
Flowers 641 @ 11.19. 2.7 wpm.
Taylor 585 @ 12.44. 2.9 wpm.

Only in the season of 1898 was Barnes the league's leading wicket-taker. He was certainly one of the leading bowlers in the competition during this ten-year period, but others may have been just as good.

During his two full seasons of first-class cricket,1902 and 1903, Barnes took 229 wickets at 19 and complained about being overbowled. Three bowlers of similar pace, Haigh, JT Hearne and Fred Tate, claimed more wickets at a lower average. Rhodes took over four hundred wickets at thirteen apiece.

By the close of the 1907 season Barnes was 34, having relocated to Staffordshire. He had perfected the outswinging off-cutter (or off-spinner) that Noble taught him and was applying the finishing touches to his inswinging leg-cutter, the famous “Barnes ball”. Since the end of his debut series in 1901-02, England had played 23 Tests. Barnes had appeared in only one of them.

With MCC struggling to put a team together for the 1907-08 tour to Australia, Barnes received a belated invitation. He wasn't convinced it was worth the time and money but reluctantly accepted. Had he not done so, it is quite possible that he would never have got another chance.

 

[Coronis]

Barnes was a very late developer. His early record in league cricket was not quite as exceptional as it was made out to be.

Throughout Barnes' long career the most prestigious English league was the Lancashire League. His first stint in it lasted from 1895 until 1905, with a couple of seasons absent playing county cricket. Leading wicket-takers in the league during this period:

Moss 528 wickets @ 7.34. 4.8 wickets per match.
Hall 693 @ 8.54. 4.3 wpm.
Barnes 765 @ 8.91. 3.8 wpm.
Lancaster 849 @ 9.00. 4.1 wpm.
Riley 611 @ 9.28. 4.2 wpm.
Mee 651 @ 9.35. 3.5 wpm.
Hardstaff 502 @ 10.44. 3.7 wpm.
Flowers 641 @ 11.19. 2.7 wpm.
Taylor 585 @ 12.44. 2.9 wpm.

Only in the season of 1898 was Barnes the league's leading wicket-taker. He was certainly one of the leading bowlers in the competition during this ten-year period, but others may have been just as good.

During his two full seasons of first-class cricket,1902 and 1903, Barnes took 229 wickets at 19 and complained about being overbowled. Three bowlers of similar pace, Haigh, JT Hearne and Fred Tate, claimed more wickets at a lower average. Rhodes took over four hundred wickets at thirteen apiece.

By the close of the 1907 season Barnes was 34, having relocated to Staffordshire. He had perfected the outswinging off-cutter (or off-spinner) that Noble taught him and was applying the finishing touches to his inswinging leg-cutter, the famous “Barnes ball”. Since the end of his debut series in 1901-02, England had played 23 Tests. Barnes had appeared in only one of them.

With MCC struggling to put a team together for the 1907-08 tour to Australia, Barnes received a belated invitation. He wasn't convinced it was worth the time and money but reluctantly accepted. Had he not done so, it is quite possible that he would never have got another chance.

Clearly playing in the wrong league.

 

[Starfighter]

There’s not actually much to learn as his methods are fairly easy to understand….

Your copy-pasting of quotes doesn't undo the gross misunderstanding you demonstrated in your post I originally quoted.

 

[HookShot]

The following quotes come from Jack Fingleton in his book ‘Masters of Cricket - From Trumper to May’, first published 1958.

It’s my second favourite cricket book after Walter Hammond‘s brilliant biography. I have the original edition from 1948. I know this because the first page is signed ‘To Peter with best wishes Xmas 1948. Aunty Gladys & Uncle Jim.’

Incidently, I also have Jack Hobbs original biography with a librarian’s stamp of ‘14 FEB 1937’. But unfortunately Hobbs was a far better batsman than author, and so his book is rather boring with little opinion or insight into the cricket of his day.

It is interesting that Noble should have placed Barnes on a pedestal for, in fact, Barnes learnt a lot about swing bowling from Noble. Barnes began, as most bowlers do, as a fast bowler, but he soon learned that there was more to the business than sheer speed. He experimented with finger-spin, both off and leg, and it was as a medium-paced spinner that he was singled out for the Australian tour by MacLaren. Barnes possessed a very shrewd and deductive cricket brain. He closely watched the other leading bowlers of that day and quickly applied some of their techniques to his own bowling.

Monty Noble, in particular, captivated him. Here was an off-spinner of the old and original school (very similar to the latter-day Jim Laker) who possessed all the variations of the art. Noble would gain tricks of flight by delivering the ball at various heights - gaining this by dipping or straightening his right leg at the moment of release - and he had an out-curve as distinct from the ordinary off-break…..

‘At the time I was able to bowl these,’ Barnes recently told me by letter, ‘I thought I was at a disadvantage in having to spin the ball when I could see bowlers doing the same by simply placing the ball on their hand and letting it go; but I soon realised that the advantage was with me because by spinning the ball, if the wicket would take spin, the ball would come back against the swing…..I may say I did not bowl a ball but that I had to spin, and that is, to my way of thinking, the reason for what success I attained.’

…..Those who have played against Barnes - unfortunately, there are now not many left - have told me that he was accurate and kept a perfect length. He had variations of pace and flight and could regulate the spot at which his swing became effective. He could regulate the amount of break. Moreover, he used the width of the crease, first over the stumps, then from half-way, and then from the edge.

It it easy to conceive Barnes as a fast-medium bowler because he could obviously bowl quick when he needed or wanted to; especially at the start of the innings. After all, he started out as a fast bowler.

But realistically, with all that exquisite variation and turn off the pitch we no choice but to label Barnes as (primarily) a spin bowler.

The key line in Fingleton’s account is…… ‘He had variations of pace and flight’.

(I included the extra paragraph about Monty Noble because I thought that the comparison to Jim Laker was interesting)

 

[Starfighter]

You're reading something in which doesn't exist.

The contemporary accounts are very clear that he was a fast-medium bowler (expect for early in his career when he was considered genuinely fast) i.e. bowled a similar pace to Alec Bedser or Maurice Tate, who employed a very unusual method to apply spin to the ball at fast-medium pace. That was what made him so good, and also so difficult to emulate.

What you are doing, from your initial post, and also there, is trying to paint him as someone who bowled faster at the start of an innings and cut down to a slower pace when the ball got older. I have never seen any evidence he did this. Furthermore the word 'flight' was used in a much looser manner back then, compared to now where it refers exclusively to how high a spinner loops the ball.

He was a fast-medium bowler, just a very usual one.

 

[HookShot]

Your copy-pasting of quotes doesn't undo the gross misunderstanding you demonstrated in your post I originally quoted.

What gross mis-understanding? Barnes obviously varied his pace according to conditions, and as we all know, you get more pronounced turn off the pitch the slower you bowl.

It’s not as if Barnes was a metronome like Glenn McGrath you bowled religiously at about the 130kph mark.

Again,

…..Those who have played against Barnes - unfortunately, there are now not many left - have told me that he was accurate and kept a perfect length. He had variations of pace and flight and could regulate the spot at which his swing became effective. He could regulate the amount of break. Moreover, he used the width of the crease, first over the stumps, then from half-way, and then from the edge.

 

[Starfighter]

What gross mis-understanding? Barnes obviously varied his pace according to conditions, and as we all know, you get more pronounced turn off the pitch the slower you bowl.

It’s not as if Barnes was a metronome like Glenn McGrath you bowled religiously at about the 130kph mark.

There are no descriptions of his bowling saying that he deliberately slowed his pace on average to obtain more turn when the ball was old, which is what you are saying. Variations in pace between balls were de rigueuer for practically every decent bowler of the time, not just Barnes. Some of these may not have even been intentional.

 

[HookShot]

Moreover, he used the width of the crease, first over the stumps, then from half-way, and then from the edge.

Incidentally, if you are bowling faster at the beginning of an innings, and therefore not getting much turn then it makes sense to bowl ‘over the stumps’.

If you are bowling more slowly later in the innings then it makes sense to bowl ‘from the edge’ of the crease if you are attempting to spin the ball from leg to off and hit the off-bail.

 

[HookShot]

In my mind the sheer ‘work-on-the-ball’ combined with variation of delivery make him more akin to a spin bowler than a fast-medium bowler. After all, what modern fast medium bowlers have such a pronounced snap of the fingers that even mid-on and mid-off can hear it?

 

[the big bambino]

The clue is the depth of the slips. Barnes bowled with the keeper up but he wouldn’t have placed his slips as deep if he was a spinner.

 

[HookShot]

But yeah, we are dealing with semantics and written accounts, so I can easily understand why most people would want to view Barnes as a fast-medium bowler.

 

[Starfighter]

But yeah, we are dealing with semantics and written accounts, so I can easily understand why most people would want to view Barnes as a fast-medium bowler.

It's not semantics.

 

[HookShot]

The clue is the depth of the slips. Barnes bowled with the keeper up but he wouldn’t have placed his slips as deep if he was a spinner.

Bill O’Reilly bowled with the keeper-up, slips back and according to Bradman was too fast to step down the wicket too….as we can see from this video.

Bill O’Reilly was a spinner.

 

[the big bambino]

It’s because he was. Think of it in terms of his time. Barnes was a pro and bowling his livelihood. So good at it he kept earning contracts until a great cricketing age. He was aware of his worth and also the possibility of injury.

It’s possible he gave up outright speed thinking it would curtail his career and earning capacity. Plus who needs it when he possessed the skills he did.

He adopted a pace suitable to his opposition. If he could keep his contract bowling at a slow pace why bother risking injury bowling unnecessarily faster?

Touring Australia for a test series was different. The tests were timeless and the pitches prepared accordingly. For this reason I do think Barnes would’ve succeeded very well in a modern setting because he could apply his skills on timeless pitches at a seamers pace.

Because of the stress he would place on his body to succeed in those circumstances, Barnes could be quite demanding before agreeing to tour. Sometimes those demands weren’t met and he stayed at home. Perhaps the injury he suffered on his first tour here influenced him there after.

Either way the bowler of his time and perhaps all time. But he varied his pace according to his opposition.

 

[HookShot]

It's not semantics.

Semantics: The branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. The two main areas are logical semantics, concerned with matters such as sense and reference and presupposition and implication, and lexicalsemantics, concerned with the analysis of word meanings and relations between them.

If we don’t have video footage and aren’t able to use a radar gun then it’s all semantics.

(Nice to meet you btw Starfighter. You seem to have a liking for cricketing history)

 

[Line and Length]

@the big bambino raises an interesting point about Barnes and his professionalism. Here are a few more excerpts from the original article I used.

Barnes saw cricket as a job. If you paid, he bowled. He put club before country, a century before Twenty20 freelancers such as Chris Gayle and Andre Russell.

As a result he appeared in a mere seven county games across nine seasons, before making his Test debut aged 28. And his 38-year first-class career included just 89 such matches in England, with only two full county seasons. He instead plied his trade in Saturday leagues, midweek Minor Counties games, tour and Gentlemen v Players fixtures, and for his country.

Barnes’ stance was prompted by the refusal of Warwickshire and Lancashire to find him off-season work. He calculated that he could quadruple his earnings by instead combining an office job with playing only on Saturdays, as a league club “pro.”

He duly played first-class cricket occasionally until he was 57, and league cricket until 67. He also worked until his death at 94. Only 12 Test cricketers have lived longer.

Barnes often feuded with administrators, selectors, captains or team-mates. Books and articles describe him as taciturn, stubborn, combative, intimidating, misunderstood and demanding. When questioned about the best captain he had played under, he responded “There’s only one captain of a side when I’m bowling, and that’s me.”

Finally, it’s noteworthy that he moved between 13 different clubs in eight different leagues. Staffordshire team-mate and famed writer Bernard Hollowood famously wrote that “I was frankly afraid… of his scowling displeasure, his ferocious glare, his crippling silences and his humiliating verbal scorn.”

 

[Victor Ian]

It's not semantics.

please refrain from steering this to the semantics of semantics.

 

[Migara]

Nobody says he is Bradman-like.

Whether he is the best is a matter of opinion, and its far from a crazy one to have, compared to many on this forum.

“The best of ‘em today is half as good as ‘Barnie.’” England great Wilfred Rhodes in 1973

Responding to this.

 

[Coronis]

Responding to this.

Pfft Rhodes was blind by then, had no idea what the best of them today looked like

 

[Migara]

Even if he was with sight, he was yet to see Marshall, McGrath, Hadlee, Ambrose, Imran and Murali, who basically owns the top spots in test bowling.