Clockwise from left top: Barlow in 1908, Barlow in 1867, Barlow as umpire, autobiography, Hornby and Barlow
by Arunabha Sengupta
Old Trafford, 1886.
It was the benefit match of Dick Barlow. The lady had come over from her home in Ramsbottom to witness the last day’s play. The boys with the brief booklets on the man of the moment accosted her: “Life of Barlow, 3d. each.” She waved them away.
At length, with one of them more persistent, she said, “My lad, I can tell thee about the life of RG Barlow; I have known him for some years. I am his mother. Here’s a penny for thee.”
Barlow took 12 wickets in the match, opening the bowling as usual. And of course, the famous stonewaller that he was, he opened the batting as well.
Two years before that, he had played the game of his life. For the North of England against Australia at Trent Bridge he had captured 4 for 6 and 6 for 42, while scoring 10 not out and 101.
Barlow played 21 seasons for Lancashire, 17 Tests for England, batting with obstinate determination and bowling left-arm slow medium with skill and guile. 11000 runs and 950 wickets in first-class cricket, 591 and 34 of them in Test matches. And then he moved on to umpiring.
His opening partnership with AN ‘Monkey’ Hornby is immortalised by Francis Thompson’s At Lord’s in which the run stealers flickered to and fro — “Oh my Hornby o my Barlow long ago.”
Hornby the hitter, Barlow the blocker. Once the scoreboard read Lancashire 45 for 1, Hornby 44, Barlow 0*, Extra 1.
In 1882, when Nottinghamshire dismissed Lancashire for 69, Barlow carried his bat with 5*.
The story related by Alan Gibson is quite definitely apocryphal, but delicious enough to repeat. Barlow was working as a railway porter when Hornby first encountered him. Hornby saw him batting against the bowling of the station-master, and asked if he might have a bowl himself. "Ay, do," was the reply. "He's been in for a fortnight."
Barlow also featured in the poem pasted on the side of the Ashes urn: “Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn; And the rest coming home with the urn.” He went on three tours to Australia.
He could be slow, but as he pointed out in his curious autobiography, there were occasions when he could score freely. He also listed out the 31 occasions when he dismissed WG Grace.
Barlow starts Forty Seasons of First-Class Cricket with the sweeping disclaimer: “I beg at once to cut away the ground from beneath the feet of the critics by making the candid avowal that authorship from a literary standpoint is not my forte.” However, the book is a delight, and an unconventional one at that. There are instructions for budding cricketers, essays about every department of the game, rare photographs, recounting of curious incidents, and a section purely dedicated to photographic plates containing autographs of various teams.
In the book we also get the taste of Barlow the poet. Yes, he did have cricketing poetry written about him, but also wrote a cricket song himself.
Then cricketers are we—each a batter bred and born
The birds do sing, and so do we—and rise at early morn
To field and run, and bat and bowl, against a worthy team.
There’s nought that can beat a cricketer’s life, out in the fields so green.
Old Ebor seriously doubted if there was “a man living so thoroughly devoted to cricket as RGBarlow.” As for Barlow himself, near the end of his life he said, “I don't think any cricketer has enjoyed his cricketing career better than I have done, and if I had my time to come over again I should certainly be what I have been all my life – a professional cricketer.”
His tombstone in Layton cemetery, Blackpool, carries the inscription, “Bowled at last.”
Dick Barlow was born on 28 May 1851.