SF Barnes

[watson]

BTW Thanks Oasisbob for the short footage of SF Barnes in action! Quite a shock really.

 

[Howe_zat]

Interesting stuff

Who would be a modern era equivalent of a 'swerve/drift' bowler then?

It sounds rather as though these players used medium-pace cutters as their stock deliveries, which depending on the amount of flight you've given it could well be used to get drift.

In modern day cricket there've since been plenty of techniques for bowlers that have surpassed this in popularity for "proper" bowlers and only really exists with "useful extra" bowlers like Collingwood or Styris, but I imagine if full-time bowlers learned and experimented with this from an early age it could well become more of a weapon than we see today.

 

[Migara]

Who would be a modern era equivalent of a 'swerve/drift' bowler then?

Spinners, the good ones. Dire ones fail to get drift and dip.

 

[SJS]

Interesting stuff



It sounds rather as though these players used medium-pace cutters as their stock deliveries, which depending on the amount of flight you've given it could well be used to get drift.

No these are not cutters.

Cutters are what the term implies, the fingers cut across the seam at the time of delivery. Thus cutters do not maintain the integrity of the seam and that is why they do not move in the air. Cutters, cut back (or away) off the pitch, often quite sharply and because the ball had travelled in a straight flight path in the air, these are so much more devastating.

These are proper spinning deliveries. Finger spinners have generally found them easier to bowl for the action of the finger spinner aids him in this. For a leg spinner this is a very difficult task indeed which is why Barnes was such a genius.

I have seen Bishan Bedi swing the ball in with a brand new ball bowling at his normal speed and looking like he was bowling his normal spin. I have seen him do it in nets, for a lark and in a couple of club games. I am sure other finger spinners with a good orthodox action may have tried it too but to spin it like a leg spinner is so much more difficult even to visualise.

It is interesting to note that those who did it more often were invariably bowlers with straight bowling arms and not the round arm action that the leg spinners generally employ.

 

[Migara]

Swerve and swing were understood differently as I have mentioned earlier. Hirst spun the ball as a left hander and when bowling into the breeze some of them moved in the air, in to the batsman. The ball was spun hence it was a swerve.

Barnes too spun the ball, a leg break which swered (drifted) in. King however, from all accounts seems to have bowled the swinging ball as we have come to know it now without actually spinning the ball. Thus there was a big gap between King swinging the ball and the swinging deliveries developed close to the beginning of the first world war.

By the way, Noble, one of the early exponents of the swerve and swing writes very eloquently on the subject. I will try and reproduce later.

Corrected.

 

[Howe_zat]

Ah right, ta SJS.

 

[Migara]

I have seen Bishan Bedi swing the ball in with a brand new ball bowling at his normal speed and looking like he was bowling his normal spin. I have seen him do it in nets, for a lark and in a couple of club games. I am sure other finger spinners with a good orthodox action may have tried it too but to spin it like a leg spinner is so much more difficult even to visualise.

This is very noticeble with good finger spinners and even with ordinary few like Jayasuriya. In fact Jayasuriya's arm ball is a similar to a seam up, with seam pointing towards right hander and the ball swun prodigously when he darted it in. (Usual arm ball of finger spinners is an undercut off break, bowled to hit the shiny side of the ball). Jaya's seam up was so pronounce that he bowled some reverse swinging arm balls in WI series in 2001.

 

[SJS]

Ah right, ta SJS.

The grip is very different too. For the off cutter the grip is about the same as the out swing and for leg cutter for the in swing with the index and middle finger almost parallel to the seam. The ball is held mainly between these two fingers with the thumb underneath. It's just that unlike the cutters, for swi g one allows the ball to leave the hand with the two fingers continuing to be in contact with their tips being the last point of contact as the ball leaves the hand. This applies backward spin on the ball

For the swerve the ball is held with the fingers and thumb at right angles to the seam so that after spinning it is possible, at least in theory, to have a chance of keeping the seam straight in flight.

 

[Prince EWS]

Who would be a modern era equivalent of a 'swerve/drift' bowler then?

I always used to imagine something like what Chris Harris bowled (with a less ridiculous action obviously), but judging by this Peebles source that I will again quote:

Swing and swerve are often confused and for that reason I would like to explain that swerve is the result of a spinning ball moving through the air, while a swing is caused by holding the seam of the ball with varying grips. IN short, swerve is caused by spin, aided by atmospherics, and swing is the result of the seam which is why the new ball swings more than the old.

It is a matter of considerable interest watching the effect of spin on the ball when bowled in a moist atmosphere and into a slight breeze. It will be found that a leg-break will swing-in (in) the air out towards fine leg, and on hitting the pitch the spin brings the ball back towards the stumps.

In the case of the off-break bowlers, his delivery, when bowling into the breeze, will swerve or "float" out towards slips and swing back towards the stumps on pitching.

He seems to be describing what we now call a spinner's drift. So, and I know this sounds weird and I'm only extrapolating that one source, but I think the currently evolutionary stage of swerve bowlers is.. Nathan Hauritz and Graeme Swann. Look at the movement in the air towards the off side before the ball pitches and turns back the other way here:
Nathan Hauritz 5/101 v Pakistan - YouTube (I'm only talking about the first delivery)

From what Peebles is saying, that's swerve. Sweve bowlers were quicker, but the way the ball moves due to the spin imparted on the ball is the same effect rather than the seam.

I'm sure these sweve bowlers bowled much quicker than modern spinners, but my read of it is that they delivered each ball with a spinner's grip, so even though they weren't getting a spinner's drop and dipping arc that we're used to today, they got break off the pitch rather than seam movement and drift through the air rather than swing.

Barnes was of course different in that he resembled a leg spin bowler rather than an off spin bowler, so he'd run in and bowl deliveries that drifted in the air towards the leg side of a RHB and then turned away from them off the pitch, at something probably resembling slow medium pace most of the time.

 

[watson]

Nice post PEWS, and good demonstrative video of Nathan Hauritz. Especially the first ball.

I like to play SF Barnes as my lone spinner in my ATG ENG XI. Is this a fair call in light of what everyone has been saying?

 

[the big bambino]

Thats all I am saying.

But why didn't you say it?

Even so I'm not convinced about the distinction of swerve from side spin and swing achieved thru seam position was not present in the golden age. Those who achieve movement via side spin are usually slower bowlers than those who achieve it from seam position. Noble as an example.

From what I've read Hirst was much quicker than spinner/swervers like Noble and is credited with getting swing thru the air by more moderm means. This would gel with his reports of his faster pace. Hirst himself was never forthcoming how he did it but he did coach players in his later years and they definitely were swingers in the modern sense.

 

[Agent Nationaux]

Bhanja got a beauty.

 

[Prince EWS]

Nice post PEWS, and good demonstrative video of Nathan Hauritz. Especially the first ball.

I like to play SF Barnes as my lone spinner in my ATG ENG XI. Is this a fair call in light of what everyone has been saying?

Barnes I'm sure bowled pretty quickly by the standards of the day when the situation called, and I see absolutely no evidence to suggest he flighted the ball like a spinner, but after reading this thread there's little doubt in my mind that he spun the ball. He got drift in the air and broke it off the pitch, just like that Hauritz delivery (but spinning the other way). He could bowl long spells and I've no doubt he'd take advantage of a turning track, so it's a fair call.

To label him a fast bowler or a spinner in the way we label modern bowlers would be inaccurate as he was neither in the way we like to think of them, but what actually did with the ball, based on the sources SJS has kindly provided, definitely seems to me to be more in line with a modern spinner than a modern fast bowler. We're probably approaching classic benchmark00 ground with his inclusion here in that the game was just so different that trying to actually balance a bowling attack with him it would be nigh impossible as he bowled something that no longer even has a classification.

Personally I'm happy to just call him one of the greatest bowlers of all time and not lose much sleep over draft or AT elevens. His actual standing in the game's history is of far more consequence IMO than the balance of imaginary composite teams.

 

[the big bambino]

Nice post PEWS, and good demonstrative video of Nathan Hauritz. Especially the first ball.

I like to play SF Barnes as my lone spinner in my ATG ENG XI. Is this a fair call in light of what everyone has been saying?

He was versatile enough so yeah I'd guess You wouldn't miss out. Barnes claimed the movement he got from pitches was achieved by spin.

 

[Agent Nationaux]

Sounds like a great bowler to be able to get "swerve" and spin at quicker speeds than your average spinner (the speeds Afridi sometimes generates maybe).

 

[watson]

Barnes I'm sure bowled pretty quickly by the standards of the day when the situation called, and I see absolutely no evidence to suggest he flighted the ball like a spinner, but after reading this thread there's little doubt in my mind that he spun the ball. He got drift in the air and broke it off the pitch, just like that Hauritz delivery (but spinning the other way). He could bowl long spells and I've no doubt he'd take advantage of a turning track, so it's a fair call.

To label him a fast bowler or a spinner in the way we label modern bowlers would be inaccurate as he was neither in the way we like to think of them, but what actually did with the ball, based on the sources SJS has kindly provided, definitely seems to me to be more in line with a modern spinner than a modern fast bowler. We're probably approaching classic benchmark00 ground with his inclusion here in that the game was just so different that trying to actually balance a bowling attack with him it would be nigh impossible as he bowled something that no longer even has a classification.

Personally I'm happy to just call him one of the greatest bowlers of all time and not lose much sleep over draft or AT elevens. His actual standing in the game's history is of far more consequence IMO than the balance of imaginary composite teams.

I think that we have enough good infomation to classify Barnes - at least when it comes to his 'stock' wicket taking delivery: 'Leg-break finger-spinner'

 

[kyear2]

Really don't see why he is seen so differently from O'Reilly or even Underwood.

 

[watson]

Really don't see why he is seen so differently from O'Reilly or even Underwood.

Here is a photo of O'Reilly's famous and unorthodox grip.

Too me it looks as though his third finger is about to flick the ball and therefore make it spin - just like SF Barnes!

Australia bowler, Bill O'Reilly, demonstrates his famous grip, ca. 1932 / by Sam Hood | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

And so now I'm going to hazard a guess and say that it was O'Reilly's ability to spin leg-breaks with his third finger, and at medium pace that caused Don Bradman to admit that O'Reilly and Barnes were similar bowlers to eachother.

 

[the big bambino]

HS Altham described him as appreciably more than medium pace capable of swinging and breaking the ball from leg or off even in the finest weather or the truest wickets in Australia. His deadliest delivery bowled from wide of the crease move in with late swerve the width of the wicket and break back to hit off.

Hollowood's father captained Barnes and said he could bowl the lot but took all his wkts with fast leg breaks. Bloody marvellous he said. Fast leg breaks and always on a length.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Chris Harris bowled with a bit too much top spin to really get it to drift, but with a more front on wrist angle he would have been able to get it to really tail in.