Eddie Barlow
Encyclopedia
Edgar John Barlow (12 August 1940 in Pretoria
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...

, Transvaal
Transvaal Province
Transvaal Province was a province of the Union of South Africa from 1910 to 1961, and of its successor, the Republic of South Africa, from 1961 until the end of apartheid in 1994 when a new constitution subdivided it.-History:...

, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 – 30 December 2005 in Jersey
Jersey
Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...

) was a South African
South African cricket team
The South African national cricket team represent South Africa in international cricket. They are administrated by Cricket South Africa.South Africa is a full member of the International Cricket Council, also known as ICC, with Test and One Day International, or ODI, status...

 cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er (an all rounder). Barlow played first-class cricket
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 for Transvaal and Eastern Province
Eastern Province cricket team
Eastern Province cricket team is the team representing the Eastern Province in domestic first-class cricket in South Africa.-Honours:* Currie Cup - 1988–89, 1991–92; shared - 1989–90* Standard Bank Cup - 1989–90, 1991–92...

 from 1959-60 to 1967-68 before moving to Western Province for the seasons from 1968-69 to 1980-81. During this time he also played three seasons with Derbyshire in the English County Championship from 1976 - 1978. He completed his first-class career in Boland in 1982-83. Barlow was named as one of the six South African Cricket Annual players of the year in 1962.

The bespectacled Barlow was both a popular and easily recognisable figure in South African cricket from the 1960s onwards - a prodigious run-maker and frequent wicket-taker, he was one of the leading all-rounders on the world stage in the 1960s. He was nicknamed "Bunter" because of his supposed resemblance to Billy Bunter
Billy Bunter
William George Bunter , is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards...

. A stand at Newlands Cricket Ground
Newlands Cricket Ground
Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town is a South African cricket ground. It's the home of the Cape Cobras, who play in the SuperSport Series, MTN Domestic Championship and Standard Bank Pro20 competitions. It is also a venue for Test matches. Newlands is regarded as one of the most beautiful cricket...

 was to have been named after Barlow but due to opposition from some of the voting clubs it has been "put on hold".

Test career

Barlow also played 30 official Tests
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 for South Africa, which would have been more but for South Africa's exclusion from the international game after 1970 because of its then government's apartheid policies.

In 1963 Barlow became the first South African player to make a century in his first Test match against Australia. He scored 603 runs in the series including a double century at Adelaide
Adelaide Oval
The Adelaide Oval is a sports ground in Adelaide, South Australia, located in the parklands between the Central Business District and North Adelaide...

.

During England's
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...

 1964-65 tour of South Africa, Barlow became embroiled in controversy in the third Test at Newlands after he survived a bat-pad chance when England bowler Fred Titmus
Fred Titmus
Frederick John Titmus MBE was an English cricketer, whose first-class career spanned five decades. Although he was best known for his off spin , he was an accomplished lower-order batsman who deserved to be called an all-rounder, even opening the batting for England on six occasions...

 thought he had had Barlow caught by Peter Parfitt
Peter Parfitt
Peter Parfitt is an English former cricketer. He attended Fakenham Grammar School, and King Edward VII Grammar School, in Kings Lynn, Norfolk....

 in the gully. It was already an ill-tempered series, and when Barlow went on to complete his hundred it was little recognised by the England players. Instead, when Tony Pithey
Tony Pithey
Anthony John Pithey was a South African cricketer who played in seventeen Tests from 1957 to 1965. He was a technically correct top-order batsmen who developed a reputation for being a stayer rather than a strokemaker...

 reached his half-century shortly afterwards, the England players went overboard in their congratulations to him, seemingly to make a point about Barlow's behaviour. The local South African papers attacked England for this, and later in the same match, English batsman Ken Barrington
Ken Barrington
Kenneth Frank Barrington , better known as Ken Barrington, played for the English cricket team and Surrey County Cricket Club in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a right-handed batsman and occasional leg-spin bowler, well known for his jovial good humour and long, defensive innings "batting with bulldog...

 caused a greater furore when he walked despite not being given out by the same umpire that had not given Barlow out.

In addition to his 30 official Tests, Barlow also played in 5 matches for the Rest of the World side that toured England in 1970 that were originally designated as Test matches, though they were later stripped of Test status. In the fourth of these "Tests" at Headingley he achieved what was then the 17th hat-trick
Test cricket hat-tricks
This is a list of all hat-tricks in Test cricket; that is, the occasions when a bowler has taken three wickets in consecutive deliveries in Test cricket matches. As of 30 July 2011, a hat-trick has been taken 39 times since the first Test match in 1877, most recently by English fast-medium bowler...

; after a further dot ball, Barlow took another wicket to make it four wickets in five balls. Barlow finished with first-innings figures of 7 for 64, which would have been his best Test figures, and match figures of 12 for 142, which would have been his only 10-wicket Test match haul.

Barlow's last official Test series was South Africa's 4-0 whitewashing of Australia
Australian cricket team
The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...

 in 1970-71.

World Series Cricket

When Kerry Packer
Kerry Packer
Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, AC was an Australian media tycoon. The son of Sir Frank Packer and Gretel Bullmore, the Packer family company owned controlling interest in both the Nine television network and leading Australian publishing company Australian Consolidated Press, which were later...

 began his World Series Cricket
World Series Cricket
World Series Cricket was a break away professional cricket competition staged between 1977 and 1979 and organised by Kerry Packer for his Australian television network, Nine Network. The matches ran in opposition to established international cricket...

 tournament in 1977-78, it gave a new avenue for the leading South African cricketers to play international cricket. Barlow was signed up for both the 1977-78 and 1978-79 seasons in which the tournament ran, and captained the WSC Cavaliers side which played in many non-SuperTest matches.

Derbyshire

In 1976 Eddie went to Derbyshire as the overseas professional and took over the captaincy half way through his first season. His methods were revolutionary for the times but he took the team to a final in the Benson & Hedges Cup
Benson & Hedges Cup
The Benson & Hedges Cup was a one-day cricket competition for first-class counties in England and Wales that was held from 1972 to 2002, one of cricket's longest sponsorship deals....

 at Lord's in the 1978 season
Derbyshire County Cricket Club in 1978
Derbyshire Country Cricket Club in 1978 was the cricket season when the English club Derbyshire had been playing for one hundred and seven years. They reached the final of the Benson & Hedges Cup. In the County Championship, they won three matches to finish fourteenth in their seventy fourth...

.

Post-retirement

After his retirement, Barlow became more active in espousing his liberal views against the apartheid policy then in place in his homeland. He took up a post as Director of the South African Sports Office in London and afterwards he became a cricket coach. He was appointed coach at Gloucestershire but owing to his father's death had to leave after two seasons. He coached Orange Free State and then Transvaal. He then became the first coach of the newly formed Super Juice Academy which was based in the Western Cape and was a feeder for Western Province and Boland cricket.

In 1996 he acquired a wine farm in the Robertson region of the Western Cape which he named "Windfall" because he and his wife considered they bought it at a good price. From concentrating on that, he was lured back to Griqualand West to coach at Kimberley. He was then invited to become the national coach of Bangladesh
Bangladeshi cricket team
The Bangladesh national cricket team is a national cricket team representing Bangladesh. The team is administered by the Bangladesh Cricket Board . Bangladesh is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status...

 in 1999 and helped put together the plans that enabled the country to achieve official Test status the following year.

In 2000 he suffered a stroke in Bangladesh which put him initially in intensive care and then a wheelchair. He was forced to sell the wine farm in 2001 to pay for medical bills that his insurer refused to pay. Later he moved to North Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, where he continued to coach locally at Marchwiel & Wrexham and also NE Wales Development squads. He was also involved with disabled cricket in Wales. Though he was not (as often erroneously stated) a full-time wheelchair user, he could only walk very slowly, so it was easier to get from A to B in the wheelchair, and for the days when he coached he used an electric scooter which was provided for him by the PCA. He died after a brain haemorrhage in Jersey on 30 December 2005.
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