EDDIE BARLOW was born in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa in 1940. He turned into a superb sportsman, playing centre for Transvaal against both the Lions and the All-Blacks and first-class cricket for Transvaal and Eastern Province before moving to Western Province. During this time he also played three seasons with Derbyshire in the 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. Barlow also played 30 official Tests 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. 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 an effective outswing bowler, brilliant slip and dynamic personality who invested each game with such energy that one felt he could bat, bowl, field and organise the teas simultaneously. He made the Transvaal cricket team in 1960, while reading geography at Wits University. In 1963 he 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, 1,523 first-class runs in Australia (he had threatened to overhaul Bradman's 35-year-old seasonal record of 1,690) and 1,900 on the whole tour including New Zealand. Barlow left Transvaal - first for Eastern Province, then Western Province - to gain leadership experience and, when Peter van der Merwe retired as South African captain, his rivalry with Ali Bacher became a national talking-point. The press and public wanted Barlow to take over, the players apparently favoured Bacher, and he won, inheriting a team that was now so brilliant that it hardly mattered who led them. Barlow's zest for the game never wavered during the two Testless decades that followed: he was dynamic for the Rest of the World team in England in 1970, taking a memorable hat-trick at Headingley. And he played on until he was 42, in 1983, taking over a pig farm north of Cape Town, and having fun as father-figure of the infant Boland team. From 1976 to 1978 he also led Derbyshire, where he galvanised a perennially weary club. When Kerry Packer began his World Series 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. In 1994 he was beaten to the national coaching job by Bob Woolmer. Five years later, he got the consolation prize of Bangladesh, and was just getting down to business when he suffered the first of several strokes. Later he moved to North Wales, He was also involved with disabled cricket in Wales. Mike Procter said Barlow "changed the face of South African cricket... Eddie was just so super-confident that it rubbed off on them." And when Bacher named his all-time South African XI for his biographer, he made Barlow captain. 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. 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 1 Bangladesh in 1999 and helped put together the plans that enabled the country to achieve official Test status the following year. He died of a brain haemorrhage in Jersey in 2005. Cricket Stats. Batting and fielding averages Mat Inns NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 6s Ct St Tests 30 57 2 2516 201 45.74 6 15 5 35 0 First-class 283 493 28 18212 217 39.16 43 86 335 0 List A 99 98 4 2983 186 31.73 3 22 43 0 Bowling averages Mat Inns Balls Runs Wkts BBI BBM Ave Econ SR 4w 5w 10 Tests 30 46 3021 1362 40 5/85 6/87 34.05 2.70 75.5 0 1 0 First-class 283 31930 13785 571 7/24 24.14 2.59 55.9 16 2 List A 99 5010 2911 161 6/33 6/33 18.08 3.48 31.1 2 2 0 For our next meeting – February – our guest speaker is CALLY BARLOW, giving her memories of Eddie Barlow. 2 .