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Sydney Barnes – Part 1 – with Andy Searle
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Of all the cricketers who played during the so-called Golden Age, none incite the intrigue in fans today quite like Sydney Francis Barnes. He was a tall, fit opening bowler blessed with a catalogue of unplayable deliveries. Those writers in the mid 20th century who looked back on this period with rose coloured glasses, often found the cantankerous, win-at-all-costs attitude of Barnes to be at odds with the supposed spirit of the age. For Edwardian Britain, which elevated the amateur gentleman to a lofty playing status, Barnes’ professional attitude to playing - and ultimately not playing - first-class cricket led him to have more than a couple of run ins with authority. Today, we’ll attempt to better understand the personality and cricket career of a man who is still regarded as one of the greatest bowlers of all time.
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ABOUT ANDY SEARLE:
Andy Searle is, arguably, the most prolific publisher of cricket books in the UK. A graduate in history from the University of Lancaster, he specializes in the Victorian and Edwardian era. A cricket tragic from the age of five, despite his family having little or no interest in the sport, he has spent the last 50 plus years as scorer, player, administrator, writer, journalist and reporter on his favourite pastime. As someone who became a victim of class distinction during his early playing career, Sydney Barnes became an early hero of his. For the last ten years he has lived in the Balkan mountains in Bulgaria - where he has helped to establish a cricket club - with his large family of dogs, cats, goats, chickens and pigs. An accomplished wicketkeeper/batsman, he still thinks that one day the England selectors will turn to him, despite being 63 years of age. In 1997, Andy published his book 'S.F. Barnes: His Life and Times'.
CREDITS:
Presenter & Producer: Tom Ford
All music used in podcast comes from the University of California Santa Barbara's remarkable collection of wax cylinder's from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are free to download and use. You can donate to the upkeep of these recordings via their website.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Golden Age of Cricket
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Golden Age of Cricket podcast. My name is Tom Ford. Of all the cricketers who played during the so-called Golden Age, none incite the intrigue in fans today quite like Sydney Francis Barnes.
00:00:22
Speaker
Blessed with a catalogue of unplayable deliveries, Barnes was the patron saint of the anti-establishment cricket league. Those writers in the mid
Barnes vs. Edwardian Cricket Ideals
00:00:31
Speaker
-20th century who looked back on this period with rose-coloured glasses often found the cantankerous win at all costs attitude of Barnes to be at odds with the supposed spirit of the age. For Edwardian Britain, which elevated the amateur gentleman to a lofty playing status,
00:00:49
Speaker
Barnes' professional attitude to playing, and ultimately not playing first-class cricket, led him to have more than a couple of run-ins with the authority. Today
Guest Introduction: Andy Searle
00:00:59
Speaker
we'll attempt to better understand the personality and cricket career of a man who is still regarded as one of the greatest bowlers of all time.
00:01:08
Speaker
My guest today is Andy Searle, who is one of the most prolific publishers of cricket books in the UK. A graduate in history from the University of Lancaster and self-proclaimed cricket tragic, he has spent the last 50 plus years as scorer, player, administrator, writer, journalist and reporter on his favourite pastime. For the last 10 years he has lived in the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria, where he has helped to establish a cricket club
00:01:35
Speaker
with his large family of dogs, cats, goats, chickens and pigs. An accomplished wiki keeper batsman, he still thinks that one day the England selectors will turn to him despite being 63 years of age.
00:01:48
Speaker
In 1997, Andy wrote his book, SF Barnes, His Life and Times. And I'm thrilled he's my guest today. Hello, Andy. Hi. Thank you for joining the podcast. Let's begin right back at the beginning.
The Spark of Interest in Sydney Barnes
00:02:04
Speaker
Why Barnes? Why did you choose him as your subject? History has always been my favourite subject. And at an early age, I got very involved with cricket.
00:02:15
Speaker
Even though my family weren't involved in cricket at all, we lived very near a cricket club and at one point my father became
00:02:24
Speaker
work behind the bar at the cricket club so i went down there very soon i was uh... the first eleven score at this club it's flickston cricket club in the manchester association in the great manchester area and uh... and i just developed an interesting cricket history used to borrow books from the library etc etc and uh... sydney barnes' name came up on many occasions with the incredible records he'd uh...
00:02:51
Speaker
he'd achieved and as time went by, as I graduated from university, I played lots of cricket, I eventually in 1990 got a job as a sports reporter for a sports reporting company in Manchester
00:03:10
Speaker
And my job interview entailed commentating on the England-India game, The Old Trafford, the week of my interview.
Writing Barnes' Biography: Challenges and Discoveries
00:03:22
Speaker
And it was the game that Sachin Tendulkar got his first century test cricket.
00:03:30
Speaker
sparked my interest more and I gradually started researching more and decided eventually that I may have enough material to write a fully fledged biography of that.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, fantastic. That's quite a story and quite an introduction to cricket. So when you came to write the biography, the book came out in 1997, I assume you started researching well before that. What literature already existed on bonds? And were there any difficulties that you had to overcome in relation to accessing resources?
00:04:09
Speaker
Well, I was amazed to find out, I always thought, because he was so famous, there will be plenty of literature on Barnes. But in fact, there were only two books existing at the time about Barnes. One was called the Sydney Barnes, the Greatest Baller of All Time by a guy called Wilfred White. And that was produced in 1935. And it was no more than a mere pamphlet. And obviously, coinciding with pretty much the end of his career in cricket.
00:04:39
Speaker
And the second one, which was not much bigger, was by a journalist from Yorkshire called Leslie Duckworth, who used to watch Barnes play for Solter in the Bradford League. So most of his book was about Barnes' time in the Bradford League, and that was called Sydney Barnes' Master Bowler. Now, I got hold of copies of these almost immediately.
00:05:01
Speaker
But I decided not to read them until I had actually researched and written my book. And as regards resources, I spent many hours at Manchester Central Library going through, they had a full collection of wisdoms, going through finding all the references to barns in all the wisdoms and everything and there were multiple over almost 50 years.
00:05:24
Speaker
There are also two main newspapers or sporting papers at the time that carried lots of interesting features and articles and that was the sporting conical and the athletic news. And they were both available, all the issues of those two newspapers, available on microfiche in Manchester Central Library. So I spent many hours
00:05:47
Speaker
trawling through a microvish for reports and everything and his life, certainly his career was covered in great detail throughout these, in all this material. There were also numerous mentions of him in other people's biographies.
00:06:05
Speaker
As you can see from my book, there are plenty of quotes on what other famous cricketers of the time. So it was easy to find the information, but it was a long, hard slog. And as you say, it was published in 1997, but I actually started researching it in the early 90s. So it did take me five or six years from starting to research it till the book was actually published.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yeah, I spent many hours in libraries during my university days on microfish, and I certainly don't miss it at all. You can find the information you're after. It just can be hard to locate it. So yeah, not missing the microfish at all. Andy, when it came to Barnes and your research, were there
00:06:59
Speaker
Did he have any descendants that were able to assist you or were there, this might be too far a stretch, anyone alive at the time who perhaps remembered him? Yeah, well, very early on, my work and this book, I showed chapters of this book
00:07:20
Speaker
to a friend of mine, a mutual friend of a man called the Reverend Malcolm Lorimer, who was this cricket statistician and historian at Old Trafford. And he was amazed that someone was writing a book about Sidney Barnes, and I met Malcolm, and we've been friends ever since.
00:07:41
Speaker
And he, through a mutual contact of his in Staffordshire Cricket, we tried to get hold of the family, his granddaughter and grandson. But it never happened. Mainly I wanted to get some photographic material for the book.
00:08:02
Speaker
but it actually never worked out. I got
Barnes' Australia Tour: Stories and Politics
00:08:06
Speaker
the impression from the contacting Staffordshire Cricket that I might be writing some sort of hatchet job on Sydney Barns, because obviously by now I knew that he was quite a difficult character and everything, and this might come, and I know it does come over a little bit in the book, but basically my aim was to show what
00:08:25
Speaker
what his status was in the cricket world at the time. So it was difficult to get in touch with him and by the time I'd written the book and everything and wanted to get it published, it was too late really to contact them and I had to rely on archive material from Lancashire County Cricket Club for the photographic content of the book and that mainly came from Malcolm Lorimer.
00:08:51
Speaker
It's interesting just listening to you then made me think because his prickly personality is quite well known and well documented what he would have thought of a biographer and whether he himself would have been helpful or forthcoming. I have my answer would have been interesting whether had he been around whether he would have helped you or not.
00:09:12
Speaker
interesting to consider. So let's talk about your book which I re-read recently and it's very good. What struck me as interesting is that you started your book with Barnes's selection for the 1901-02 tour of Australia, Asher's series in Australia. Why did you decide to start your book there?
00:09:37
Speaker
Well, I suppose the main reason is that that's just such a fabulous story, even if it's not true.
00:09:44
Speaker
that Archie McCarran chooses Barnes, the boats are sailed off, they're going through the Bay of Biscaid as a massive storm and they think the boat's gonna capsize and Archie McCarran goes to, most of the squad had never been to Australia before, never been on a boat before and Archie McCarran turns to them and says, if we do go down, at least that bugger Barnes will go down with us.
00:10:10
Speaker
So it was just a fabulous story to start on and I was very conscious when I was writing it. Obviously I was writing it over a number of years.
00:10:17
Speaker
to try and structure it. I didn't want it just to be chronological. I wanted to get the several themes in because there weren't many themes in Barnes Life. His career with Staffordshire in the mine account is cricket. His long career in league cricket is test career. So I really needed to stitch it all together. And so I thought it might be good to start with that first entrance into the world cricket stage.
00:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, and can you explain the context of this selection for the 1901-02 tour and the politics behind it, specifically the feud between Lord Hawke and the captain, Archie McLaren?
Barnes' Early Career and Influences
00:11:01
Speaker
Well, at this time, it changed a couple of years after this tour, but at this time, the captain of the touring team chose the touring squad and Archie McLaren was the captain.
00:11:13
Speaker
Barnes played a game at the end of the 1901 season for Lancashire and took six wickets in one innings I think and also bowled McLaren in the net
00:11:25
Speaker
And there's a famous quote, you hit me on the left, he hit me on the thigh and he apologized to me. And I said, don't be sorry, Barnes, you're coming to Australia with me. Also, probably an apocryphal quote. But Lancashire had got in trouble on the bowling front at this point in 1901. Johnny Briggs, who had a fabulous career for England, was in an asylum. He'd had a breakdown, a seizure on the field.
00:11:52
Speaker
and he was to die in early 1902, and Arthur Mould, who'd also had a good career for England, as well as Lancashire, had been no-balled for throwing. So both of those two left, their two main, Lancashire's two main bowlers, left the scene at the same time, so they were looking for new bowling resources, and Barnes was the person that McLaren came up with to replace these two bowlers.
00:12:20
Speaker
So Andy, what do we know about Barnes's early life? I mean, he was born in 1873. And as we mentioned, he makes his test debut in 1901-02. So he's in his late 20s, which is not young for the time. But what do we know about his early life and his early influences?
00:12:44
Speaker
Did he come from a cricketing family for example and if not was there someone else who you could attribute being his biggest influence? He lived very near a cricket club and he used to go down there. By all accounts he started playing cricket at 15 which is quite a lot late age to start playing.
00:13:06
Speaker
eventually he was good enough to attract the uh... attention of the smedic club he was from smedic and he came under the influence of a coach called billy bird who taught him to bowl fast so he started off as a fast bowler and then he came to the attention of warwickshire played a few games for warwickshire in the early eighteen nineties before warwickshire were a first-class county and without very much success and then disappeared but managed to get
00:13:35
Speaker
a professional contract in the Lancashire League at Richton. Now the Lancashire League at the time was becoming famous but at the time it was only famous in England as a place for professional cricketers from other parts of the country to play and at the time you had to qualify to play for a county, you had to live in that county for a certain period of time. So several of Lancashire's players
00:14:04
Speaker
that didn't live in, or born in Lancashire, moved to the Lancashire League to try and qualify to play for Lancashire. So yeah, he makes his test debut during the 0102 series in Australia, and then he comes back with the team, and he met with the 1902 Ashes series, but he only plays
00:14:33
Speaker
in a single test, and that's the third test at Sheffield. And he does very well. He takes six wickets in the first innings. Gilbert Jessup later said that, quote, it was in the selection room that the rubber was lost. So Barnes only plays one test that series. Why did England have so many disastrous selections during the first decade of the 20th century?
00:15:01
Speaker
Well, there's just one name responsible for that. Well, two names, really, Lord Hawke and Archie McLaren. They were the relative captains of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Massive rivalry had already developed for the two counties still exists today. And Lord Hawke was the chairman of selectors and Archie McLaren, the captain, and they both disagreed on who which personnel they should have. But the selectors had the final say.
00:15:31
Speaker
Lord Hawke also being captain of Yorkshire and thinking that Yorkshire was more important than the national scene, used to withdraw his players from England's side and for example in the 2001-2 tour of Australia,
00:15:49
Speaker
York should win the county championship in 1901-1902, Tour of Australia. York should win the county championship in 1901 by a country mile. And there are three main players who've been responsible for that, Wilfrid Rhodes, George Hurst and Stanley Jackson.
00:16:05
Speaker
were all withdrawn by Lord Hawk from McLaren's touring squad to Australia, who were automatically weakening that touring squad. And he did the same during the 1902 season in various games.
00:16:20
Speaker
to make sure that his players were fresh for the Yorkshire team. And he did it, again, throughout the early 1900s, throughout the Edwardian period, until he was unceremoniously sacked as chairman of selectors after the 1909 Australian tour of England. So he was primarily responsible. Archie McLaren was also probably
00:16:49
Speaker
just as culpable of the loss of that series in 1902 because in the match at Old Trafford he decided to get one over on Lord Hawk by out of the 12-man squad choosing Fred Tate of Sussex instead of Scofield Haig from Yorkshire out of that 12-man squad. So Scofield Haig couldn't play for Yorkshire
00:17:13
Speaker
He was 12th man for the England side, and Fred Tate played his one and only test, and it's known as Fred Tate's match. He was the last man dismissed at the end of the game, and England lost by four or three runs, and also he dropped a vital catch in Australia's first innings.
00:17:31
Speaker
Combined together, Lord Hawke and Archie McLaren were responsible for a lot of the mistakes, the series defeats that England had throughout those 1900s period.
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah and poor Fred Tate, I mean as you say that match is known as Fred Tate's match for not a glowing performance but I feel like his reputation was saved a generation later through his son Morris who went on to have a fairly good test career. Still on Lord Hawk Andy, I'm just going to quote from your book
00:18:06
Speaker
Um, in, and you, you write this sort of explanation about the master nations behind a lot of these team selections and the influence of Lord Hawk. So you write, Hawk gives an insight into his rather perverse attitude to England team selection. When he writes, the great point is that it does not matter whether we win or lose, though we should like to win for the sake of England.
00:18:30
Speaker
He cared little for the success of the England test team. What mattered to him was Yorkshire. And it's absolutely true, isn't it? I mean, his desire to have Yorkshire at the top of the county table and for their success really influenced all of England team selection, didn't it? Yeah, yep, that's certainly true. And to be fair to Lord Hawke,
00:18:58
Speaker
Yorkshire Lancashire matches, county matches in Yorkshire were watched by huge numbers of people.
00:19:05
Speaker
And Yorkshire, obviously, the county championship matches, there were 26 of them in this period. So it was an income for the club. They happened more often. So the main point being, I don't think someone like him should never have been chairman of selectors. Someone from Yorkshire or even Lancashire should never have been chairman of selectors.
00:19:32
Speaker
There were, at that period, far better candidates for those jobs. Yeah, yeah.
Barnes' Career Choices: County vs. League Cricket
00:19:38
Speaker
Andy, at this point of the podcast, it'd be great if you could explain a little further, you've already touched on it, but the differences and the structure of the various competitions and levels of cricket in England at this time. And I'm speaking from a personal point of view, but I think also for
00:19:58
Speaker
a lot of the non-English listeners out there who might not be as familiar because every country has its different structures. And in relation, how it relates to Sydney Barnes, our subject today. So there was test cricket, which was, you could argue, the highest level to achieve, and that was at a national level. But then there was first-class cricket,
00:20:24
Speaker
which usually comprised of county cricket, but also there were first-class matches, which W.G. Grace often played in, like the Gentlemen or the Southern England versus Northern England had first-class does. But then there was this thing called league cricket, which Sydney Barnes played in a lot and often chose that over first-class cricket. So can you further explain how they all sat and why Barnes chose one over the other?
00:20:52
Speaker
Well, in between league cricket and county cricket, there was, of course, minus counties cricket. And I'm not quite sure most of the current first class counties had already been absorbed into the county championship by then. But there were clubs like Northamptonshire and the most recent Durham, who eventually became part of the county championship. But minus counties cricket was important at the time.
00:21:22
Speaker
because it was also played by County Cricket, 2nd 11th. So in the fixture list of Staffordshire, where Barnes played,
00:21:36
Speaker
Lancashire seconds and Yorkshire seconds both played regularly against Staffordshire and Sydney Barnes. And Sydney Barnes did remarkably well in these games from his last test in 1902 till he was recalled in 1907. In 1906 he took 119 minor counties wickets
00:22:02
Speaker
No one will ever beat that. It's just impossible, particularly with the current structure today. But it was far and away the highest number of wickets taken. Every season he was breaking records. And because he was taking wickets against Lancashire and Yorkshire seconds,
00:22:19
Speaker
This all filtered through to Lord Hawke, Archie McLaren. They knew that he was getting better since his last test appearance. And so he became an automatic choice before the end of the decade. As regard league cricket as well, the Lancashire League was well known. Lots of professionals from around the country played in it. It was played in front of big crowds.
00:22:49
Speaker
These were clubs in old cotton towns in East Lancashire. There were thousands of people at each gate. So the feats of Sydney Barnes in that Edwardian period were getting known in the cricket world quite easily. They were in all the newspapers.
00:23:10
Speaker
everyone could read about them. There was a clamour for Barnes to return to the test team, which he eventually did in the tour of 1907-08.
00:23:20
Speaker
I suppose what I'm getting at Andy is, and without putting too fine a point on it, is why did he choose, and if we look at other cricketers of the time, say a Wilfrid Rhodes, why did Barnes choose to play so much cricket away from county cricket? Was it for money? Is that because he was a professional cricketer? Is that what he ultimately was driven by? It was first, second and third money. Just an example.
00:23:50
Speaker
The contract, when he played two seasons of County Cricket for Lancashire, at the end of 1903 he was offered the contract £200 for the year. He was happy to have that £200 as long as Lancashire found him a job.
00:24:04
Speaker
during the off season, but that wasn't included in the contract. He was tied to Lancashire for £200. His contract in 1904, playing for church in the Lancashire league was £300 plus performance bonuses over 10 shillings for over five wickets, 50 runs, which the five wickets he was doing every weekend. There was also collections at the ground.
00:24:31
Speaker
Also, he could play for Staffordshire one game a week, a two day game, and also have a job as well. So he was he was raking in the money. And he perhaps might have stayed in county cricket. But his his his life took a very different turn when when he he met a woman called Alice Taylor in 1902.
00:24:59
Speaker
while he was playing for Lancashire and they basically eloped together and she was already married to a guy called George Taylor and they ended up divorcing
00:25:16
Speaker
and Barnes in court in 1903 had to pay a huge sum of money in compensation to George Taylor. The divorce wasn't... Men... Who's frowned upon. Men divorcing, divorces weren't normal in this case. So someone to, for a woman to leave her husband and go with someone else, this was, it was just completely unheard of. And the magistrates decided
00:25:42
Speaker
that Barnes had to pay this huge sum of money, it was over £300, to George Taylor. So he had little choice at the end of the 1903 season than to find that money. And that was through going back to Lee Cricket. Yeah, that's fascinating. And really underlines the point which
00:26:03
Speaker
modern writers and researchers make is that when we look at the Golden Age, we often think of arts, the gentlemanly amateur, but there were just a raft of these professionals who were using it as a way for income. I mean, we think of modern cricket and the astronomical figures they're paid today in the various Indian Premier Leagues and things, but
00:26:25
Speaker
You know back then these cricketers who weren't of a certain class used it as a way to stimulate their lifestyle I suppose and Sydney Barnes is probably as I said in my introduction he is almost the patron saint of it because he he he knew where to make money he knew he was good.
00:26:43
Speaker
And he could make a lifestyle from it. He was a cricket mercenary. But you can ask yourself, why didn't people like Wilford Rhodes and George Hurst at Yorkshire do the same thing? Or John Tildsley and Walter Breerley at Lancashire in this period do the same thing? The reason was quite simple.
00:27:02
Speaker
working people were downtrodden basically they they tipped the forelock to the upper classes they were expected to play county cricket expected to to accept and still at 200 pounds a year at the time the average wage in England at the time was about one pound a week so 200 pounds a year for playing cricket a game that you love a top level in the country
00:27:26
Speaker
probably appeal to people like Wilford Rhodes and George Hurst, John Tilley. But to Sidney Barnes, who valued his craft more than most, it wasn't enough. He was searching for more money and better, and not so much work. The county game was, people were playing two three-day games a week. They
Barnes' Bowling Style and Legacy
00:27:52
Speaker
were travelling between venues on trains and they could go from old traffic
00:27:56
Speaker
to Canterbury on a train during the night to play the next game. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to settle life where he could play a few days a week and earn more than he was playing on the county circuit for six months of the year. Yeah. Yeah. And in an earlier episode on this podcast, I spoke to Patrick Faraday who wrote Wilford Rhodes biography. And yeah, you get the sense certainly from Wilford Rhodes that all the traveling and certainly when he also went to Australia,
00:28:25
Speaker
when Lord Hawk allowed him, of course, he would get back into his English lifestyle and off he'd go on a train the next day to play county cricket. It would be exhausting. So it makes sense. And also what you say about Barnes' marriage and having to pay through the divorce probably guided him on the direction he took regarding his cricket career.
00:28:55
Speaker
I may be gone for a long, long time. Long, long time. Long, long time. But when I go, you will know that I'm gone.
00:29:07
Speaker
If you're enjoying this podcast, perhaps you'd like to support it by buying me, Tom Ford, a coffee. Every little donation helps with the production costs and also inspire me to keep going. You can support by donating as little as $5. Visit BuyMeACoffee.com slash Golden Age of Cricket. Andy, I'm wary that we're, you know,
00:29:35
Speaker
25 minutes into the podcast and we actually haven't spoken about Barnes the cricketer at all. So Let's talk about him as a bowler What type of bowler was he? You know because it seems like if you read Records, he sometimes is described as a fast bowler a medium bowler an offcut or a swinger a spin bowler He sent he sounds quite unique so
00:30:04
Speaker
Can you answer what sort of bowler he was and if there is a, for the listeners, is there a modern equivalent of Barnes today in terms of style? He was all that and more. He started off originally as a fast bowler but he developed this swing and swerve of a bowler, then he developed being able to cut the bowler back, he developed these throughout, it became better and better as he went along.
00:30:30
Speaker
He wasn't like a child prodigy who just stayed the same throughout his career. He worked on his game assiduously. I said he didn't like to play in the county cricket. He had time, by playing league cricket and playing minor counties cricket, he had time to develop his skill so that when he did eventually play on that highest stage, he was at the best of his ability. As regards any modern equivalent,
00:31:01
Speaker
I've been thinking about this. I can only look at the people who took a quantity of wickets that Barnes might have took had he played the same number of tests as them. The two people I can come up with are Jimmy Anderson, who's now past 700 test wickets, who started in the Lancashire League pretty much like Barnes did at Burnley.
00:31:26
Speaker
who developed, when he first played county cricket, everyone thought he was just fast and daft, but a lucky bowler. I remember his first one day international game, he got five wickets against Australia, but his five wickets came with long hops.
00:31:48
Speaker
short balls down the leg side and everything, where he gradually became a better baller, being able to swing the ball both ways. He is very much from that same
00:32:01
Speaker
same school of Lancashire League thinking and working on your game. And of course, he hasn't played much County cricket because he is basically being central contracted for many years. So he has been able to go on as long as Barnes did, for example. The other person that I would say in modern terms in terms of developing different types of delivery is Shane Warren.
00:32:31
Speaker
Shane Warne, I watched endless videos of Shane Warne, he didn't just bowl leg spinners, he could bowl flippers, deucers, he could swerve the bowl, he bowl differently in different conditions. I once was at Hampshire's ground before it closed, when he was captain of Hampshire.
00:32:53
Speaker
watching him practice in the net and the number of different deliveries he was producing was just uncanny and this was towards the end of his test career and his ability to improve his game and to develop different types of delivery for different batsmen was exactly the same as what Sydney Barnes did back in the early 20th century.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah. And you could argue that Warns had a relatively long career as well, especially considering his lifestyle, which got out of hand a few times. But, you know, he was playing T20 cricket in Australia, I think, until he was almost 40 or was 40. He was playing in India. He was one of the original IPL players, IPL captain.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. So Andy, in your book, you dedicate a good chunk of one chapter to the Barnes ball, or you call it the Barnes ball. Can you describe what this delivery actually was? Well, this, the term the Barnes ball was coined by Neville Cardes, many years afterwards, based on reports he'd heard from Australia, and from when he played in the county championship with Lancashire.
00:34:13
Speaker
Apparently, he was practicing during a game between Lancashire and Derbyshire, and he managed to work out how to swing the ball away and spin it back through the batsman. This is the delivery, which became his stock delivery, which decimated Australia in the 1911-12 series in Australia, and which Cardus termed the Barnes ball.
00:34:42
Speaker
Don't forget, at the same time, there were many innovations in the game. Bertie Bozenkett, in 1903-04, Bertie Bozenkett went to Australia as a bit of a mystery bowler. And he was the first googly bowler, the first bowler who could spin the ball away and make it turn the other way.
00:35:05
Speaker
of course, it became known as the Bosey for a while, before the wrong and the googly term came in, of course.
Barnes' Departure from Lancashire and Professionalism
00:35:13
Speaker
So you've mentioned it already, Andy, the sort of departure of Barnes from County cricket, or at least from Lancashire. I'm just going to, this is at the end of the 1903 season, I'm going to read a report which you included in your book,
00:35:30
Speaker
which was written by Wisden at the time. So this is what they wrote regarding Barnes leaving Lancashire. Before the summer was over Barnes connection with the Lancashire Club came to an end.
00:35:44
Speaker
He declined to sign the usual form promising his services for 1904 and in consequence he was left out of the team in the last match. It was stated that he had accepted an offer from the church club and would return to Lancashire League cricket. His defection caused quite a sensation and was commented on in rather bitter terms.
00:36:04
Speaker
Temperament is a great thing in a cricketer and in this respect Barnes has always been deficient. If he had possessed the enthusiasm for the game that characterized Barlow or Briggs, he might have made a great name for himself, his natural gifts as a bowler being so remarkable." Which is really inflammatory language by wisdom at the time, you know, they use the word defection as you point out in your book.
00:36:32
Speaker
And it really shows what the establishment, the cricket establishment at the time, thought of Barnes, who didn't want to play for Lancashire. Do you think Barnes was out of line here, not wanting to play for Lancashire? I think he possibly, in the back of his mind, he wanted to play. He was off some terms, he said, but not good enough.
00:36:55
Speaker
I want more, and because he wasn't... He was offered the same terms as every other player, but he thought he was worth more. He'd had a very good season in 2003, 131 wickets. He was very high up in the national averages. In his first season at Lancashire in 1902, he'd taken 80 odd wickets, but missed several games because he'd become injured in Australia during his first tour there in 102.
00:37:23
Speaker
So he still took over 80 wickets. So he thought that he was only going to get better and he wanted better terms. But Lancashire weren't able to offer any better. They offered their professionals exactly the same rate of pay, whoever they were, and whatever their contribution to the team was. It's just only a pity that five or six years later,
00:37:48
Speaker
Winston didn't print an apology for that particular message. Yeah, that's true. Perhaps they could do one today, perhaps as a retrospective. Now, we've touched on it already, and we will certainly talk about it more, and without any spoilers for listeners, but Barnes does end up having a very long career. He plays cricket well late into his life.
00:38:16
Speaker
And his ability to, I suppose, bounce from various teams and leagues may have put him in good stead. And there's a quote in your book from Plum Warner who says, and I quote, there can be little doubt that Barnes profits by playing comparatively little cricket.
00:38:35
Speaker
which enables him to keep fresh and to come to each match full of energy and life. Do you agree with this quote in terms of Barnes' longevity?
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. As I say, he was playing one two-day game for Staffordshire a week. He was playing league cricket on Saturdays and Sundays, so he was playing four days. He was still playing a lot of cricket, but he was getting that valuable rest in between. As I mentioned before, a county cricketer will be playing six of the seven days and travelling long journeys by train, changing trains all the time.
00:39:13
Speaker
which was a difficult life over six months. You had to be very strong to do that, and lots of county cricketers didn't last as long as people, for example, like Wilfrid Rhodes, and certainly no one lasted longer than Sydney Barnes at the high level of the game.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah, we have already touched on his personality and how it could be tankerous or prickly. He himself actually described himself in certain terms or he once said, and I quote, I was a difficult man to play with. I did my best at all times and expected the others to do the same.
00:39:54
Speaker
Do you think he, when we think about this quote and as you know a lot about his career, do you think he simply possessed the more modern approach to sport which was to win at all costs?
00:40:07
Speaker
I think he was thoroughly professional. There was a bit in my book where someone describes the corner of this changing room. They had various embrications and various things that he did to keep his fingers supple and his limbs supple and everything. It was just like a doctor's surgery, one corner of the changing room, but in his corner of the changing room.
00:40:31
Speaker
He applied the most modern methods he could and the modern methods of training. He had the physical abilities. He was tall for that age. He had a good physique. He wasn't overweight. He ate well. He drank but only in moderation. He smoked but only in moderation.
00:40:56
Speaker
He developed a professional cricketer's life and did all the right things to make his career last as long as it could. He was the archetypal sportsman of the time and yes, certainly the way he approached the game certainly smacks more of the end of the 20th century than the beginning.
00:41:21
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. He just sounds like a smart individual, really. I mean, he knew how to take care of his body. As you say, you know, he smoked a little, but when you look at what all the other cricketers were doing at the time, I mean, they were literally posing team photos holding a pipe. Often the pipes are in their mouth as well. So to smoke a little was almost not smoking at all.