Dick Barlow

Richard Gorton Barlow (28 May 1851 – 31 July 1919) was a cricketer who played for Lancashire and England. Barlow is best remembered for his batting partnership with A N Hornby, which was immortalised in nostalgic poetry by Francis Thompson. He was also an umpire and a football referee, including at the record 26–0 score between Preston North End and Hyde in the FA Cup.

Cricket was engrained in Barlow from an early age, and he went on to play for Lancashire for 20 years and continued to play at lower levels into his sixties. He left school aged fourteen to work in a printing office as an apprentice compositor. He was later an iron moulder with Dobson & Barlow in Bolton, and then in 1865 he moved to Derbyshire when his father got work at the Staveley Iron Works. It was for Staveley Iron Works Cricket Club that Barlow first played cricket, becoming a cricket professional with Farsley in Leeds in 1871, which was the year in which he first played for Lancashire. From 1873 to 1877 he was the professional for Saltaire in Bradford. Barlow played one match for Derbyshire in the 1875 season against a United North of England Eleven.

Barlow was 5 ft 8 inches tall and weighed approximately eleven stone. He was strong and sturdily built. He was known for his defensive batting, which made it hard to dismiss him, and which earned him the nickname Stonewaller. On one occasion he scored no runs in a partnership of 45 with A. N. Hornby, who was dismissed for 44. He holds the world first-class record for the lowest score by a batsman carrying his bat: against Nottinghamshire in 1882 he batted through the innings and made 5 not out when Lancashire were dismissed for 69. Barlow was also a good bowler with much variation.

According to a (possibly apocryphal) story related by Alan Gibson, Barlow was working as a railway porter when Hornby first encountered him. Hornby happened to see 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 is immortalised in one of the best-known pieces of cricket poetry, called "At Lord's" by Francis Thompson. In it Thompson remembers watching Barlow and A. N. Hornby play for Lancashire through rose-tinted glasses. The first verse of the poem, which is repeated as the final verse, is the best known:

  It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
       Though my own red roses there may blow;
   It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
      Though the red roses crest the caps, I know.
   For the field is full of shades as I near a shadowy coast,
   And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
   And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host
      As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
         To and fro:
      Oh my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!

Barlow took part in the original Ashes match and is commemorated by the poem pasted on the side of The Ashes urn:

  When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
  Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
  The welkin will ring loud,
  The great crowd will feel proud,
  Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
  And the rest coming home with the urn.