Sydney Francis Barnes (19 April 1873 – 26 December 1967) was an English professional cricketer who is regarded as one of the greatest bowlers of all time.

He was right-handed and bowled at a pace that varied from medium to fast-medium with the ability to make the ball both swing and break from off or leg.

Barnes was unusual in that, despite a very long career as a top-class player, he spent little more than two seasons in first-class cricket, briefly representing Warwickshire (1894 to 1896) and Lancashire (1899 to 1903).

[1][2] He was the second son of five children whose father, Richard, lived nearly all of his life in Staffordshire, working for 63 years at the Muntz Metal Company[2] which was based at Selly Oak in Birmingham.

[4] In 1894, when Barnes was a 21-year-old fast bowler, he was asked to join the ground staff of Staffordshire County Cricket Club but he found the terms unattractive.

[10] On 23 August, Barnes made his first-class debut for Warwickshire against Gloucestershire at Clifton College Close Ground, except that he did not take the field as play was restricted by bad weather to just 72 overs of his team's first innings, in which they reached 102–2.

[8] Barnes's association with Lancashire began in 1899 when he played for the club's Second XI against Staffordshire in a match at the County Ground, Stoke-on-Trent, on 10 and 11 July.

[16] He rejected an offer to join the Lancashire ground staff, preferring to remain in better-paid league cricket, which he could combine with full-time employment as a clerk in a Staffordshire colliery.

This was a rain-interrupted draw but Barnes scored 32 runs and then took six for 70 in the Leicestershire first innings, reducing them to an all-out 140 in response to Lancashire's total of 328–8 declared.

[8] Lancashire's captain was Archie MacLaren who was about to form an England team to tour Australia in 1901–02 and, despite Barnes's limited first-class career to this point, he was invited to join the squad.

This came about because Lord Hawke refused to allow George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes to travel but MacLaren had become, to quote White, "the first to see in Barnes a bowler of international calibre".

[19] Australia levelled the series in the second Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground, winning by 229 runs although Barnes had figures of six for 42 and seven for 121.

[22] Despite his differences with MacLaren, Barnes became a first team regular at Lancashire through the 1902 and 1903 seasons, producing several successful performances, although he was still troubled in 1902 by the knee injury sustained on tour.

[27] When the tourists played Western Australia, Barnes shared a stand with George Gunn of over 200 for the fifth wicket while scoring 93, his personal best in first-class cricket.

[12] In the first Test at Sydney, which England lost, captain Johnny Douglas shared the new ball with left-arm seamer Frank Foster.

[7] At Melbourne, however, Douglas bowed to the pressure and surrendered the new ball to the Staffordshire bowler, who responded with a spell of four wickets for one run in his first five overs.

When Frank Foster dismissed Victor Trumper and Barnes added Roy Minnett, the home side were reduced to 38 for six.

There were several record crowd and gate receipt matches when he was playing, including one Priestley Cup final at Bradford Park Avenue, a first-class ground used by Yorkshire.

Like all professionals operating in league cricket, he benefited from "pass the hat" crowd collections (performance rewards) at each game and, as an additional supplement, he secured a coaching role at Bradford Grammar School which is near Saltaire.

He did not develop his off break bowling skill until he joined the Army and at Saltaire he was recognised primarily as a promising batsman who was also a useful pace bowler.

During that time, when he was attending a coaching class with Yorkshire at Headingley, Laker listened to a conversation between George Hirst and Herbert Sutcliffe who apparently did not often agree with each other about cricket, but Laker recalled Sutcliffe being in complete agreement with Hirst's view that "Sydney Barnes was the greatest bowler there has ever been and what's more the greatest bowler there ever will be".

Fielders at mid-off and mid-on reported hearing the snap of his fingers as he bowled, with the batsmen unable to read which way the ball would break.

[52] Barnes was described as more than six feet tall and maintaining an erect posture with wide shoulders, a deep chest, long arms and strong legs – in John Arlott's view, "perfectly built to be a bowler".

[36] Although technically formidable, Barnes allied his skillset to a hostile persona and great stamina which, Arlott says, "were reflected in constant, unrelenting probing for a batsman's weakness and then attacking it by surprise, each ball fitting into a tactical pattern".

Harry Altham wrote of Barnes's bowling: "At appreciably more than medium pace he could, even in the finest weather and on the truest wickets in Australia, both swing and break the ball from off or leg.

Most deadly of all was the ball which he would deliver from rather wide on the crease, move in with a late swerve the width of the wicket, and then straighten back off the ground to hit the off stump".

[54] The great Australian batsman Clem Hill told Neville Cardus that, on a perfect wicket, Barnes could swing the new ball in and out "very late", could spin from the ground, pitch on the leg stump and miss the off.

Cardus remarked on Barnes's creativity as "one of the first bowlers really to use the seam of a new ball and combine swing so subtly with spin that few batsmen could distinguish one from the other".

(Cardus, Wisden Obituary) Bernard Hollowood drew two cartoons of Barnes, which appear in his book Cricket on the Brain.

Barnes would seem transcendent if they were not outweighed by his chapter on that great bowler which is a fine passage of cricket literature... this is a book of many and well-cut facets.