The great South African all-rounder Eddie Barlow died on December 30, 2005. Wisden celebrated his life and career at the time of his death.
Barlow, John Edgar, died on December 30, 2005, aged 65.
Though not the most gifted or elegant of his outstanding, and largely lost, South African generation, Eddie Barlow was the most combative. Barlow came into Test cricket as a 21-year-old in December 1961, and was able to play 30 times before South Africa’s exclusion in 1970. In Tests, he nearly always opened, but he was also an effective outswing bowler, brilliant slip and dynamic personality who invested each game with such energy that one felt he could bat, bowl, field and organise the teas simultaneously. “He rolled up his sleeves high above his elbows, flexed his muscles and bounced on to the field like a prize fighter,” wrote Rodney Hartman.
Known as ‘Bunter’ because he was short and stout at school in Pretoria, Barlow turned into a superb sportsman, playing centre for Transvaal against both the Lions and the All Blacks. He made the Transvaal cricket team in 1960, while reading geography at Wits University. But his early plans to become a teacher were overtaken by events: he made 72 on his debut for Transvaal B as a 19-year-old and rocketed into the national team and, in Australia in 1963/64, to stardom. He scored 603 runs in the series, 1,523 first-class runs in Australia (he had threatened to overhaul Bradman’s 35-year-old seasonal record of 1,690) and 1,900 on the whole tour including New Zealand.
Back home, he was more politically committed than other cricketers and came close to winning a parliamentary seat for the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party. But his rivalry with Bacher was not finished and, after retirement, he was persuaded to go to London as South Africa’s sporting ambassador, arguing for an end to the boycott even though apartheid was not yet abolished. This isolated him politically from the liberals who admired him, and geographically from developments back home. Some of Barlow’s friends saw this as a skilful manoeuvre on Bacher’s part.
He went back and bought a vineyard in the Free State without ever losing his restless ambition and enthusiasms: he came up with a ‘Three Plus Plan’ in the early 1990s, advocating that South African teams should score at more than three an over. In 1994 he was beaten to the national coaching job by Bob Woolmer. Five years later, he got the consolation prize of Bangladesh, and was just getting down to business when he suffered the first of several strokes and was confined to a wheelchair. Barlow moved to North Wales with his third wife, continued coaching youngsters and retained a friendly smile for everyone.
Mike Procter said Barlow “changed the face of South African cricket… Eddie was just so super-confident that it rubbed off on them.” And when Bacher named his all-time South African XI for his biographer, he made Barlow captain.
