Sydney Barnes may have been the greatest bowler in history, but he could also be a difficult man. In the 2012 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, Peter Gibbs recalled a day in his company.
Jack Ikin stood on the footplate of the team bus scanning the road ahead. Once of Lancashire and England, now – in the summer of 1964 – captain of Staffordshire, he seemed unusually agitated as we drew alongside a tall, lean figure waiting at the kerb. The morning had begun damp and murky, and the man wore a black Homburg and a dark overcoat more suited to a February funeral than a day in late summer.
As a small boy I had seen SF Barnes once before, when he bowled the honorary first ball in the match between the 1953 Australians and a Minor Counties XI at the Michelin Works Ground in Stoke. He was 80 at the time, but declined the new ball in case he induced a collapse. My only previous recollection of him had been a photograph in The Book of Cricket, written in grandiloquent style by Denzil Batchelor. I would guess he was in his seventies when the photo was taken, and judging by his expression he found the experience sorely trying.
“The bowlers might like to roll this pitch up and take it with them?” I ventured. “They need all the help they can get. Cricket’s a batters’ game. Always has been.” Anyone perusing SF’s figures might think otherwise. His 719 first-class wickets (189 in Tests) were captured at an average of 17.09. His 1,441 wickets for Staffordshire cost less than half that, and his 4,069 league victims barely six runs apiece.
“Even so, an ideal pitch for cutters?” I persisted. “Possibly. I was a spinner, not a cutter.” His expression had clouded again at my apparent confusion. There was no classification in my MCC coaching manual for a fast-medium spin bowler, though I had heard how he made the ball swerve in the air before bouncing and breaking sharply either way.
The patented Barnes Ball was the leg-break delivered at pace and without rotation of the wrist. It was at its most potent on the matting tracks of South Africa when, at the age of 40, he took 49 wickets in four games, still a record for a Test series. Fielders at mid-off and mid-on reported hearing the snap of his fingers as he bowled, the batsmen unable to read which way the ball would break. In that respect he was the Ramadhin or Muralitharan of his day. But whereas they were spinners using a front-on action and freakish articulation of the arm, SF’s spin was derived purely from the twist exerted by his fingers rather than through leverage of the wrist or elbow. In his opinion the cutter, delivered when the bowler drags his fingers down the side of the ball, was a much inferior cousin.
In the middle, wickets continued to fall. The scoreboard read 68-7; the pavilion clock showed ten past six. Butterflies began to flutter in my guts with the realisation that we were unlikely to avoid the follow-on. Subtracting the time allowed between innings, our last three men had to survive only 10 more minutes to prevent us from having to bat again before the close. SF slid a silver Hunter from his waistcoat pocket. Cradled in his capacious hand, it looked the size of a sixpence. He read the time, sniffed the air and, without a sideways glance, gave me the benefit of his wisdom. “Better get your pads on.” Immediately, batsmen eight, nine and 10 fell without change to the score.
Bedfordshire’s Trevor Morley had returned 7-23. His feat took me back to 1953, when I had seen SF bowl that first ball at Stoke. In the first innings of the match Ray Lindwall had shot out seven batsmen for 20. A coincidence perhaps, or was Barnes’ Mephistophelian aura still spooking batsmen from beyond the boundary?
Sweating on a pair and with a nasty five minutes to survive, I felt more jittery than usual. Though there had been no rain since the start of play, the pitch had still not dried. In the area just short of a length it was dinted like a sheet of beaten copper. I pushed forward defensively to my first ball and was relieved to meet it in the middle of the bat. The second landed in virtually the same spot, but this time leapt vertically, hit the shoulder of my bat and dollied to second slip.
The gloaming had descended prematurely and, though the lights of the clubroom glowed brightly, SF remained a shadowy figure under the lee of the pavilion veranda. My cheeks burned with rage and humiliation at registering the first and, as it would turn out, only pair of my career. I kept my head down until I reached the pavilion steps. Only then did I steel myself to look at him, but his eyes were fixed ahead, fingers wound round an imaginary ball, his mind still scheming to destroy better batsmen than me.
