Biography

An insatiable confidence and a stark resemblance to Billy Bunter were two of Eddie Barlow’s characteristics that added a lot of appeal to the excellent cricketer he already was. An all rounder who scored runs very heavily and picked up wickets rather frequently, his rather unkempt appearance made a commentator once say, “He looks like an unmade bed” about him.

That however, does not take away from the fact that, he scored more than 2500 Test runs for South Africa, picked up 40 wickets in 30 Tests, and would have played for much longer had it not been for the apartheid ban. He did continue playing first class cricket for another thirteen years till 1982, in which he played for Kerry Packer’s WSC, and signed up for the county of Derbyshire. Post his playing days he got involved in coaching, and coached sides like Gloucestershire, Orange Free State, Transvaal, Super Juice Academy and Griqualand West. If this was not enough for his resume, he went on to become the National Coach of the Bangladesh Cricket team, helping them win the Test status in 2000.

However, in 2000, he suffered a stroke, which caused him to become bed ridden, but a slight recovery made him get back to coaching. He continued coaching locally, till he died of a brain haemorrhage in 2005.