S.F.BARNES -CRICKET (STAFFORDSHIRE AND ENGLAND)
Sydney Francis Barnes was born on April 19, 1873 at Smethwick, Staffordshire. He was the second son of five children, three boys and two girls. Richard Barnes, his father, left Shropshire as a baby and spent the rest of his life in Staffordshire, though he worked for a Birmingham firm for 63 years.
Barnes was first introduced to cricket at the age of 15 when he played for a local side which had its ground at the rear of the Galton Hotel, Smethwick. Soon he became a member of the town club which at that time ran three teams. It was at this time that he learned that a ball could be made to turn after pitching. Smethwick’s first eleven were members of the Birminghan League and their professional Billy Bird, of Warwickshire, coached the players one evening a week. Bird asked Barnes to practise at his net and he taught Barnes to spin the ball from the off as he himself bowled medium-paced off-breaks. According to Barnes all the coaching he ever received did not amount to more than about three hours all told.
Barnes first came into the limelight as a bowler when Smethwick were playing Handsworth Wood and lost the toss. He was keeping wicket and their opponents had made only eight runs when he was told by the skipper, Dick Thomas, to take off the pads and bowl. In those days he was bowling fast-medium off-breaks-he knew nothing of the leg-break- and was so successful that when the last man came in he had taken six wickets for seven runs. The last man had a go and hit three fours off him before Barnes had his revenge. He finished with seven wickets for 19 runs. His performance for Smethwick eventually brought him to the notice of the Warwickshire County Club and he was asked to play the last match of the 1893 season against Gloucestershire at Bristol. (In those days it was enough to play for a club near Birmingham to qualify for Warwickshire). He played matches for Warwickshire in the 1894, 1895 and 1896 season.
A professional career beckoned and he signed for his first club, Rishton, in the Lancashire League, at a salary of £3 10sh. a week, his duties including those of groundsman. The contract further added ‘that 7sh. 6d be paid Barnes for batting when his scores reached 50 and also 10sh. 6d per match for bowling when he captured six wickets per march and not unless’. Although £3 10sh. was quite a decent sum in those days, when beer was three halfpence a pint and cigarettes five a penny it does not compare favourably with present day rates.
In his first season he took 71 wickets at a cost of slightly under 10 runs a wicket, as well as averaging nearly 20 with the bat. The following summer he did even better with 85 wickets, followed by 87, and in 1898 he was only three short of his 100 wickets at an average cost of 8.46 runs. In his five seasons with Rishton he learned to bowl the leg-break which he was to develop so devastatingly and took 411 wickets for an average of 9.10. During his last season with this club he played for Lancashire second eleven.
Barnes played a total of only 27 Test matches, 20 of them against the arch enemy, Australia, and he took 189 wickets for an average of 16.43 runs each- 106 wickets against Australia for 21.58 runs each and 83 against South Africa for only 9.85 each. He was six feet one inch in height, lean but muscular, with long arms and long fingers with two or three long, springing strides in his run-up, he delivered the ball when it was at the highest point above his head. His armoury included the leg-break, the off-break, in-swingers, out-swingers, top-spinners although his chief asset was the leg-break. In all first-class matches he took 719 wickets for an average of 17.09 runs each. To be added to these are his 1,437 wickets for Staffordshire at a mere 8.10 runs each, a feat without parellel in Minor Counties cricket and his 4,069 wickets in league and club cricket. In all classes of cricket, Barnes took 6,225 wickets at an average of only 8.31 runs each.
In 1903 Barnes parted ways with Lancashire. He wanted Lancashire to find him a winter job, so that he would have something to look forward to when he finished playing cricket. But, as Wisden commented some time afterwards ‘this the Lancashire Committee could not, or would not, find him’. Years later in an interview Barnes drew attention to all those who ‘after fleeting years as famous cricketers, feted and fussed, dropped out, returned to the mine or factory or at best, took a fourth-rate beerhouse, trading as best they could upon their faded glories’.
Between his first two tours to Australia, Lord Hawke tried to induce Barnes to go to South Africa, but Barnes then had a good position with good prospects, with a firm of Staffordshire iron-masters and when he declined the invitation Lord Hawkes commented: ‘We can’t understand you-you only play when you like’.
He was always business-like, on and off the field, whether there was humour in it or not, as in a match between Porthill and Burslem in the North Staffordshire League when Albert Hollowood, father of a future editor of Punch, came in first wicket down to face Barnes. Hollowood was very strong on the off and his captain advised Barnes to put another man out at backward point. ‘No, replied Barnes in a voice loud enough for Hollowood to hear, ‘leave the field; he can’t cut-especially me’.
Grand Old Man
During the later years of his life Barnes received many honours of varying kinds. In 1951 he was made an honorary member of the M.C.C and in 1953 became a life menber of the Staffordshire Society in London. In 1954 Staffordshire County Committee commissioned his portrait and Mr. Harry Rutherford, the Lancashire artist did the studies for the the painting in the large room of the Swan Hotel in Stafford. The painting hangs in the Long Room at Lords alongside W.G. Grace.
In April 1963, the Staffordshire County Committee honoured his 90th birthday by sending him a hamper of food and wine. Since 1939 when he was 66 he worked for Staffordshire County Council at Shire Hall and excercised his great gift of copperplate writing which he learned at school from a master who, if his pupils did not hold the pens correctly, rapped their knuckles.
Barnes, despite his age and fitness, did not come of a long-lived family. When he finished with Stone in 1940 when he was 67, he was in perfect physical condition and possibly could have played for years. When he was 48 they asked him to go to Australia. He did it by just keeping fit, regular habits and a determination to succeed. He used to do a lot of gardening at one time and during the winter months played football and hockey and went skating and rowing. He never had to diet. He smoked a pipe since a youngster, but only occasional cigarettes, and enjoyed a drink and a cigar.
Sydney Francis Barnes was born on April 19, 1873 at Smethwick, Staffordshire. He was the second son of five children, three boys and two girls. Richard Barnes, his father, left Shropshire as a baby and spent the rest of his life in Staffordshire, though he worked for a Birmingham firm for 63 years.
Barnes was first introduced to cricket at the age of 15 when he played for a local side which had its ground at the rear of the Galton Hotel, Smethwick. Soon he became a member of the town club which at that time ran three teams. It was at this time that he learned that a ball could be made to turn after pitching. Smethwick’s first eleven were members of the Birminghan League and their professional Billy Bird, of Warwickshire, coached the players one evening a week. Bird asked Barnes to practise at his net and he taught Barnes to spin the ball from the off as he himself bowled medium-paced off-breaks. According to Barnes all the coaching he ever received did not amount to more than about three hours all told.
Barnes first came into the limelight as a bowler when Smethwick were playing Handsworth Wood and lost the toss. He was keeping wicket and their opponents had made only eight runs when he was told by the skipper, Dick Thomas, to take off the pads and bowl. In those days he was bowling fast-medium off-breaks-he knew nothing of the leg-break- and was so successful that when the last man came in he had taken six wickets for seven runs. The last man had a go and hit three fours off him before Barnes had his revenge. He finished with seven wickets for 19 runs. His performance for Smethwick eventually brought him to the notice of the Warwickshire County Club and he was asked to play the last match of the 1893 season against Gloucestershire at Bristol. (In those days it was enough to play for a club near Birmingham to qualify for Warwickshire). He played matches for Warwickshire in the 1894, 1895 and 1896 season.
A professional career beckoned and he signed for his first club, Rishton, in the Lancashire League, at a salary of £3 10sh. a week, his duties including those of groundsman. The contract further added ‘that 7sh. 6d be paid Barnes for batting when his scores reached 50 and also 10sh. 6d per match for bowling when he captured six wickets per march and not unless’. Although £3 10sh. was quite a decent sum in those days, when beer was three halfpence a pint and cigarettes five a penny it does not compare favourably with present day rates.
In his first season he took 71 wickets at a cost of slightly under 10 runs a wicket, as well as averaging nearly 20 with the bat. The following summer he did even better with 85 wickets, followed by 87, and in 1898 he was only three short of his 100 wickets at an average cost of 8.46 runs. In his five seasons with Rishton he learned to bowl the leg-break which he was to develop so devastatingly and took 411 wickets for an average of 9.10. During his last season with this club he played for Lancashire second eleven.
Barnes played a total of only 27 Test matches, 20 of them against the arch enemy, Australia, and he took 189 wickets for an average of 16.43 runs each- 106 wickets against Australia for 21.58 runs each and 83 against South Africa for only 9.85 each. He was six feet one inch in height, lean but muscular, with long arms and long fingers with two or three long, springing strides in his run-up, he delivered the ball when it was at the highest point above his head. His armoury included the leg-break, the off-break, in-swingers, out-swingers, top-spinners although his chief asset was the leg-break. In all first-class matches he took 719 wickets for an average of 17.09 runs each. To be added to these are his 1,437 wickets for Staffordshire at a mere 8.10 runs each, a feat without parellel in Minor Counties cricket and his 4,069 wickets in league and club cricket. In all classes of cricket, Barnes took 6,225 wickets at an average of only 8.31 runs each.
In 1903 Barnes parted ways with Lancashire. He wanted Lancashire to find him a winter job, so that he would have something to look forward to when he finished playing cricket. But, as Wisden commented some time afterwards ‘this the Lancashire Committee could not, or would not, find him’. Years later in an interview Barnes drew attention to all those who ‘after fleeting years as famous cricketers, feted and fussed, dropped out, returned to the mine or factory or at best, took a fourth-rate beerhouse, trading as best they could upon their faded glories’.
Between his first two tours to Australia, Lord Hawke tried to induce Barnes to go to South Africa, but Barnes then had a good position with good prospects, with a firm of Staffordshire iron-masters and when he declined the invitation Lord Hawkes commented: ‘We can’t understand you-you only play when you like’.
He was always business-like, on and off the field, whether there was humour in it or not, as in a match between Porthill and Burslem in the North Staffordshire League when Albert Hollowood, father of a future editor of Punch, came in first wicket down to face Barnes. Hollowood was very strong on the off and his captain advised Barnes to put another man out at backward point. ‘No, replied Barnes in a voice loud enough for Hollowood to hear, ‘leave the field; he can’t cut-especially me’.
Grand Old Man
During the later years of his life Barnes received many honours of varying kinds. In 1951 he was made an honorary member of the M.C.C and in 1953 became a life menber of the Staffordshire Society in London. In 1954 Staffordshire County Committee commissioned his portrait and Mr. Harry Rutherford, the Lancashire artist did the studies for the the painting in the large room of the Swan Hotel in Stafford. The painting hangs in the Long Room at Lords alongside W.G. Grace.
In April 1963, the Staffordshire County Committee honoured his 90th birthday by sending him a hamper of food and wine. Since 1939 when he was 66 he worked for Staffordshire County Council at Shire Hall and excercised his great gift of copperplate writing which he learned at school from a master who, if his pupils did not hold the pens correctly, rapped their knuckles.
Barnes, despite his age and fitness, did not come of a long-lived family. When he finished with Stone in 1940 when he was 67, he was in perfect physical condition and possibly could have played for years. When he was 48 they asked him to go to Australia. He did it by just keeping fit, regular habits and a determination to succeed. He used to do a lot of gardening at one time and during the winter months played football and hockey and went skating and rowing. He never had to diet. He smoked a pipe since a youngster, but only occasional cigarettes, and enjoyed a drink and a cigar.
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