Spirit On The Water (8 page)

England did not bat well and collapsed for 145, some 50 runs short of a first innings lead. When Australia batted again, Barnes got Joe Darling out for a duck for the second time in the match, but Victor Trumper and Clem Hill scored heavily and England were left a target of 339 to win.

By the time England started their second innings, the smoke from the factories that surrounded Bramhall Lane made visibility very difficult and conditions were not conducive to being outside let alone playing cricket. England were all out for 195 with only MacLaren and Jessop making a significant contribution.

The next match was at Old Trafford and Lord Hawke got his revenge, Barnes was dropped. Technically of course, he hadn’t been picked in the first place, so Hawke probably maintained that he wasn’t being dropped, just not selected.

This was to be one of the most famous Test matches ever, and inextricably linked with Fred Tate, the man who effectively replaced Sydney Barnes. Victor Trumper scored a century before lunch and Australia reached a total of 299. England in reply scored 262 with F.S. Jackson scoring 128. Australia were then skittled out for 86, but early in the innings Fred Tate dropped Darling, who top scored with 37, on the square leg boundary.

England only needed 124 to win but subsided to the bowling of Trumble. Tate was clean bowled with only 4 needed. Australia had won “Fred Tate’s match”, and the Ashes, by 3 runs. It seems certain that Barnes would have made a difference had he been playing. It might be a bit of a stretch to say that Trumper was his
‘rabbit’ (come up with your own Sun headline employing the word ‘Thumper!’) but Barnes did get him out thirteen times in twenty Tests. In addition, he had dismissed all the top Australian batsmen cheaply in their previous encounters.

It was hard on Tate who was a decent county bowler – he had had an outstanding season for Sussex on the wet wickets of 1902, taking 153 wickets for them. This proved to be his one and only Test match but he did contribute to England’s cause by fathering a talented son. Maurice Tate took 155 wickets in thirty-nine Tests for England – ironically in a style not dissimilar to Sydney Barnes, and was a good enough batsman to score a Test century.

Barnes wasn’t selected for the last match at the Oval either. Gilbert Jessop, who had also been inexplicably dropped for the Old Trafford Test, was recalled and scored one of the fastest ever Test centuries off only 76 balls. He had gone in at 48 for 5 with England needing 263 to win. Hirst and Rhodes with the apocryphal “we’ll get ‘em in singles” got the 15 runs needed in a last wicket partnership.

Like a fleeting, brilliant meteor in the sky, it looked like the Test career of Sydney Barnes was over. A victim of the small-minded squabbles between MacLaren and Hawke and his own stubborn nature. After a successful second season with Lancashire, when he took 131 wickets at an average of seventeen runs each, Barnes seemingly engineered his own dismissal. He had demanded an improvement on the one pound a week that the county was prepared to pay him in the winter. Not an unreasonable request you would think from a player who had bowled more overs and taken more wickets than any of his team-mates.

Nevertheless, it was not one that the gentlemen of the Lancashire committee felt they could accede to. Barnes turned up for a match towards the end of the season and was told that his
services were no longer required. He was summarily sent home. That showed him who was in charge!

Barnes probably wasn’t too concerned. He signed for Church in the Lancashire League where he would be paid twice as much for half the work. Predictably, he was not considered for the tour to Australia in the winter of 1903. At the age of thirty, that looked like the end of his first-class career. He had played a couple of seasons of county cricket and four Test matches. The normal scenario would be a few more years playing in the league and then retire to maybe run a post office or open a pub.

However, that was not the Barnes way of doing things. Although he performed well for Church they did not win the league as they had expected. After two seasons, he was offered a reduced contract. Barnes being Barnes would not accept that and he moved back to the county of his birth.

He joined Porthill Park and for the next nine years played in the lesser known North Staffordshire League. During this time he was to appear in another twenty-three Test matches and establish himself as the preeminent bowler of his era and arguably the greatest bowler of all time. Not many cricketers performing in the North Staffs League would be on the national selectors’ radar, especially a player who had ruffled a few feathers as Barnes had done. Also, without Barnes, England had won the series in Australia in 1903/04 (Lord Hawke had allowed Rhodes and Hirst to go this time). When the Australians returned in 1905, England retained the Ashes, winning two games and drawing the others. In addition, although England lost the series in South Africa in the winter of 1905/06, they gained revenge at home the following year. Again, Barnes had not been considered for selection in any of the Tests.

So how did Sydney Barnes get back in the England squad that sailed to Australia at the end of 1907? The main reason was
the surfeit of first-class cricket played at this time and the sheer length of time that a tour to Australia took a player away from his home and family, and, in the case of some amateurs, their business interests. A number of the top players were not available to tour. Others were in decline and no longer the force they used to be.

Barnes, on the other hand, even at the age of thirty five was relatively fresh. He benefited from having played less cricket over the years and was still approaching his prime. He was far too good for the batsmen in the North Staffordshire League. In 1907, he took 112 wickets at an average of 3.91. It must have been a
double-edged
experience for any batsman playing against Porthill Park at the time. They didn’t score any runs but at least they could say that they had faced the great S.F. Barnes!

He also started playing for Staffordshire and continued to do so until 1935, taking 1,441 wickets at an average of just over 8 runs each. Barnes took all ten wickets at the cost of only 26 runs against a reasonably strong Yorkshire Second XI in the 1907 season. If Lord Hawke didn’t see it, he would certainly have heard about it. Maybe it was that performance that got Barnes on the boat to Australia?

An under-strength and inexperienced England team took on a strong Australian side very keen to regain the Ashes in 1907. England lost the First Test by two wickets and then Barnes, the all-rounder, came to the fore in the next Test at Melbourne. He took yet another ‘fifer’ (5 for 72 off 27 overs) and, batting at No. 9, featured in a last wicket stand of 40, scoring 38 not out and hitting the winning run. The series was level.

However, Australia won the next two matches thus winning back the Ashes. There were modest contributions from Barnes; always economical but without the spectacular success he was used to. Normal service for Barnes was resumed in the last Test at Sydney. He destroyed the Australian batting with 7 for 60 off
twenty-two overs. England scored 281 and established a first innings lead of 144.

Even though the series had already been won, the Australians did not give up. Victor Trumper was dropped off Barnes when only 1 and then made England pay by going on to score a brilliant 166. Barnes, probably tired after bowling more overs than anyone else on tour and maybe sulking about the dropped chance, only got one wicket and England were set 279 to win. A last wicket stand between Barnes and Crawford of 31 took them to within 50 runs of victory but there was to be no repeat of the Second Test heroics.

Although England had lost the series by four Tests to one, Barnes had done well again. He had taken 24 wickets and always been shown respect by the Australian batsmen. Charlie Marcartney, the Australian batting at the other end, described a ball that Barnes bowled to Victor Trumper: “The ball was fast on the leg stump but just before it pitched, it swung suddenly to the off. Then it pitched, broke back, and took Vic’s leg stump. It was the sort of ball a man might see if he was dreaming or drunk.”

It would not have been unreasonable for Barnes to expect to be in the side to face Australia in the First Test at Edgbaston in the summer of 1909. Lord Hawke, in his wisdom, thought otherwise.

He didn’t pick Barnes but he did give in to media pressure, which played its part a hundred years ago as it does today, and recalled Archie MacLaren to the team as captain. For any number of reasons, this was an extraordinary decision. They manifestly did not get on and their mutual enmity was not going to help win back the Ashes. On top of that MacLaren, at the age of thirty-eight, was well past his best. In his prime he was a supreme, commanding batsman. In 1895 he scored 424 for Lancashire at Taunton against Somerset which remained the highest first-class score for the next thirty years.
By the time the Australians arrived in 1909, he was no longer captain of Lancashire and hadn’t played Test cricket for a few years.

Allen Synge, in his book
Sins of Omission
, which describes mistakes made by England selectors over the years, likens Hawke and MacLaren to two cantankerous and argumentative characters in an over-long Samuel Becket play who are eternally linked in misfortune for England.

Beckett, the only Nobel Prize winner ever to appear in
Wisden
, would surely have approved of the analogy. I don’t think the use of the expression “over-long” is a deliberate attempt at a pun. Even Steve Harmison would be hard pushed to bowl an over long enough to contain a Beckett play.

If MacLaren had wanted Barnes in his team, he was not successful in getting him. To the surprise of the public, players and press, Barnes was not selected for the first two games. If the Australians were equally puzzled by his omission they were certainly not unhappy. As it turned out, England managed to win the first Test but the selectors contrived to make five changes for the next game, only two enforced. England went into the Second Test at Lords without a fast bowler and lost by 9 wickets.

Finally, Barnes was recalled for the Third Test at Headingley. He took 1 for 37 off twenty-five overs in the first innings and then 6 for 63 off thirty-five overs in the second. Despite his efforts, England lost the match. Barnes got another ‘fifer’ (5 for 56) in the drawn Test at Old Trafford. No doubt the Lancashire committee enjoyed watching his performance. The Oval Test was also a draw and Australia had retained the Ashes.

Once again, the MacLaren/Hawke/Barnes triumvirate had failed. 1909 saw the end of MacLaren’s fine Test career. Lord Hawke was finally relieved of his duties as a national selector but Barnes was named as one of
Wisden’s
‘Five Cricketers of the Year’.

It seems that at last, Sydney Barnes had established himself as an England regular. Even though he went back to playing for Porthill Park and Staffordshire, he was selected to go to Australia in October 1911. He had taken part in four series against the Australians and had been on the losing side each time. He had always performed well himself but was he an unlucky omen for the England team? The signs were not good at the start of his fifth attempt to win the Ashes.

First of all, C.B. Fry was asked to lead the side but could not spare the time. So Plum Warner was invited to take on the England captaincy. He in turn was taken ill early on the tour and was unable to play in any of the Test matches. The widely held view at the time was that it would be the end of civilisation as we know it if a professional captained England.
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There were only two other amateurs in the touring party – Douglas and Foster – so one of them had to be captain.

The job fell to J.W.H.T. Douglas, the captain of Essex, playing in his first ever Test series. His nickname was ‘Johnnie Won’t Hit Today’ which I suppose makes a change from ‘Douglasy’ or whatever similar sobriquet he would be given if he was playing now. He was a gentleman all-rounder and a good county player. How he got on with Sydney Barnes was going to be a key factor in determining the success of the tour.

The First Test was at Sydney and the portents were not good. Johnnie Douglas decided to open the bowling himself, along with fellow amateur Frank Foster. Barnes’s response was quite restrained
in the circumstances. “That’s all very well Mr Douglas, but what am I ‘ere for?” was his observation. He could not comprehend how someone other than himself could open the bowling and wasn’t afraid to air his views. His fellow professionals were equally bemused and one can imagine that the Australian opening batsmen had to pinch themselves when they heard the news.

Predictably, the Australians made hay in the sunshine, scoring 447 including a century from Victor Trumper. Barnes bowled steadily when he eventually came on but the damage had been done. England went on to lose the match by 146 runs.

Barnes and England were on course for another series defeat. Something had to be done. There was an England team meeting to discuss what had gone wrong. To Douglas’s credit he, in modern parlance, ‘took on board the feedback’. First of all, Wilfred Rhodes completed his journey up the batting order from England’s No.11 to opening batsman and began his eminently successful partnership with Jack Hobbs. Secondly, it was agreed that it might be a good idea if Sydney Barnes opened the bowling.

There was an immediate reward in the Second Test at Melbourne when Barnes produced one of the most incisive and dramatic spells of bowling seen in Test cricket. Here is Plum Warner’s description of the start of the match:

The first ball from Barnes bowled Bardsley off his pads. Next ball, the captain, Clem Hill took a single. This was to be the only run off Barnes for an hour. After another maiden, Kelleway missed an inswinger from Barnes and was LBW. Australia were 5 for 2. The final ball from Barnes next over pitched on Hill’s leg stump and hit the top off. The home side were 8 for 3. This is how Hill describes his experience of facing Barnes in that innings: