NICK FRIEND: At times, the hype around Tom Barber has not been helpful but, after leaving Middlesex for Nottinghamshire, he is finding his feet and taking his chance. He opens up on turning potential into numbers, fast-tracking and expectation
Tom Barber bowls fast. Just ask Eoin Morgan, whose thumb he fractured during a Middlesex net session three years ago. “He’s got a yard,” reflected England’s white-ball captain in the aftermath, typically acerbic and understated in his assessment.
By then, Barber was already responsible for the quickest delivery ever recorded at Loughborough’s National Performance Centre: 97mph, three away from the holy grail. “That’s my job – I bowl fast,” he tells The Cricketer. “To be the fastest person ever tracked there, I’m actually very proud of that record.
“It’s been a journey of gradually progressing my strength, my flexibility, my explosiveness. And that all comes together in bowling fast. Also, it’s a mindset. I think even if you’re on a flat pitch at Taunton and you’ve got an old ball, it’s about a willing to bowl fast and a want to bowl fast. That’s what I want to do – because it’s my job in the team.”
This feels like the focal point of a fascinating, eye-opening conversation with one of English cricket’s more intriguing figures. Now 25 years of age, Barber has only played 23 professional games, with just 28 wickets to show for it all.
But his name, because of a tantalising skillset, has transcended his numbers. In English cricket’s arms race, pace is king; and in Barber, it exists in an alluring abundance.
“For a few years now, I’ve felt that I’ve really been bowling very quickly, and I even feel that there’s a bit more to go to consistently get up to 95mph,” he says. “I wouldn’t say there’s a particular number I want to hit, but I always feel with anything you can eke out a little bit more – a mile an hour here and there.”
Only, it has taken a move away from Lord’s to begin a proper exploration of that promise. When he stepped out for Nottinghamshire in the first game of the Bob Willis Trophy, it marked a return to first-class cricket after only two previous appearances, both in 2018. He had never taken a red-ball wicket as a professional until bowling Derbyshire’s Michael Cohen five months ago.
Likewise, an 11-match T20 career boasts a current economy rate of 11.25 and a haul of just 12 wickets. And yet, upon his release by Middlesex at the end of 2019, Peter Moores signed him up; he has since been rewarded with an extension after an encouraging first year.
Tom Barber has long been touted for big things on account of his pace
Back when Daniel Vettori was Middlesex’s T20 coach, he compared Barber to a young Mitchell Starc: tall, left-arm, rapid – a bowler to be let off the leash rather than instructed with donkeywork.
Vettori was far from alone in his excitement: a month before his County Championship debut in 2018, and having played just two List A games as a teenager – but none for four years, Barber was called up for the North v South series in the Caribbean.
In a series set up to give a platform to the next generation of England players, here was a thrillingly talented rookie. Of those involved, Sam Curran, Ollie Pope, Dom Bess, Keaton Jennings, Matt Parkinson and Saqib Mahmood have since taken to the international stage. Others like Sam Hain, Nick Gubbins, Richard Gleeson, Laurie Evans and Joe Clarke have all been on the periphery. None, two years ago, were as raw as Barber.
He is far from the first player with a desirable box of tricks to have his journey sped up. Nor does Barber regret that early exposure: “I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing to be fast-tracked,” he reflects. “It really accelerated my game and taught me a lot about myself as a bowler and on a personal level, too.”
But it also comes with complications: hype, namely, and expectation in a cricketing nation obsessed with its hunt for raw speed.
Last year, George Garton told The Cricketer his own story. The pair are not dissimilar: the same status as left-arm fast bowlers capable of cranking the speed gun right up. When Garton was 20 and his first-class career just nine games old, he was catapulted into England’s Ashes touring party as injuries mounted up.
“Because there aren’t too many of me, suddenly there’s more pressure on you because everyone is hoping for you to do well,” he explained. “Almost, you’re put in positions that maybe you don’t deserve straight away because people want to fast-track you through stuff.”
"I want to be the most skilled fast bowler there is"
Barber recognises those thoughts from his own experience. “After that Ashes series down under, all the talk was about pace and 90mph, people that can rough up the Australians, wasn’t it? You can definitely feel that.
“For someone like George Garton, who can bowl 90mph, left-arm and can swing the ball, naturally if I was a spectator or a fan, I’d be very excited as well. You do have to keep that in the back of your mind because it spurs you on – people want you to do well and there’s excitement around you, but you also need to stay really level-headed and concentrated on the process rather than looking at an Ashes tour, an England Lions tour or anything like that.
“You need to concentrate on what you’re doing and how you’re going to get there. You can get quite lost up in the hype and the excitement around it, so all I try to do is concentrate on the process and I think everything will fall into place if I do that.
“I think there has been a lot of talk about the ‘potential’ around me and that I have a ‘high ceiling’ and whatever, but I feel now like I’m starting to put that into performances.”
At times in his first year as a Nottinghamshire player, the pieces of the jigsaw began to come together. One spell against Lancashire’s lower order stands out in his mind; he took three wickets in four hostile overs. As he talks through those moments, he does so with a sharp focus on the theatre of the occasion, like an adrenaline junkie describing a sky-dive or a racing driver analysing the thrill of flying down the straight. Barber is intelligent and engaging company, though never more so than when discussing pace.
“I know we haven’t had the crowd in, but you can just sense it,” he says. “Against Lancashire, you just felt like something was going to happen. I felt in really good rhythm, I was bowling fast, took a couple of wickets and you just feel the excitement and the atmosphere rise a bit.
“Even going back to under-15 stage, when I was coming through the age-groups at Hampshire and bowling pretty fast, whizzing it past people’s noses then. Even now, when I’m bowling in the nets at Notts, there’s an atmosphere of excitement and I really feel that. I think that tag got stuck to me pretty quickly, as I think it does to any young fast bowler who’s coming in and creating a bit of noise.”
Barber's Nottinghamshire debut was just his third first-class match
Is that the biggest challenge, then: remaining rational and steering clear of buying into the external hype?
“It’s very difficult,” he admits. “A lot of stuff gets written, a lot of stuff gets said on social media. People tag you in stuff, so it’s hard to avoid at times.
“You should read the good things about yourself, but you can’t get too lost in it because you can suddenly think that you should be doing this or that when actually you’re on a journey. That journey could take however many years or it could be next week. Who knows?”
In his youth, he also spent time on the ECB’s pace programme, where he first came across Kevin Shine, now Nottinghamshire’s bowling coach and a key ally in the next phase of Project Barber.
Barber was never taught to bowl as he does. Rather, it came naturally: “The little technical points – the braced front leg, the delay in the action – I haven’t been coached that,” he says. “With my hip separation, Shiney said it’s one of the fastest he’s ever seen – the way I go from my delay to actually bowling the ball, it’s the fastest he’s ever seen.”
Like many of his generation, his love for the game was forged by the 2005 Ashes series and the addictive sights of Simon Jones, Brett Lee, Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison hurtling to the crease. “That really inspired me to bowl fast.”
And so, here’s where it changes. Opportunities in the Bob Willis Trophy opened his eyes to the simple fact that speed isn’t enough on its own. “I want to be the most skilled fast bowler there is,” he says now. That is the new goal, updated with longevity and genuine success in mind.
At Middlesex, he learned from Richard Johnson, but Shine’s influence has been paramount – not only from a technical standpoint, but also on the tactical side of the game. “Particularly in first-class cricket and learning how to take your wickets,” he adds. “It’s all right bowling fast, but you have to have the skill with it as well.”
"There has been a lot of talk about the 'potential' around me and that I have a 'high ceiling', but I feel now that I'm starting to put that into performances"
For all the interest he has piqued, helmets hit and eyebrows raised, you sense that combination hasn’t always been in place. “At the moment, my main focus is working on those skills, really learning how to take my wickets and then I think the pace will come naturally,” Barber explains.
“Anything I do shouldn’t be to the detriment of my pace because that’s my main weapon. As well as being a left-armer, it’s what stands me out from anyone else.
“But what I’m doing at the moment with Shiney is refining those little skills and working on a few different things: my wobble seam, my stock ball. If I can continue working on my inswinger at 90mph, that will cause real problems.”
He describes these lessons as “the biggest takeaway” from three Bob Willis Trophy appearances, where he saw first-hand that “the skill you need to have as a bowler is crazy”.
Speaking to The Cricketer following his own first-class debut in August, Sussex youngster Henry Crocombe echoed those sentiments. Eighteen at the time, he had effectively been plucked from age-group cricket to be thrown in against the pros.
“Bowling that pace in academy cricket, you can rush players,” he said. “If you can bowl 80mph in academy cricket, you’re pretty quick. You go to first-class cricket and that’s a medium-fast bowler; they’re not going to worry at all about that. You have to use your bumper a lot more effectively, you can’t just not worry about your length. You have to get it right.”
Two players at different stages of their career, but coming to understand a similar truth. None of this is to suggest that Barber plans to reinvent himself; instead, this is about his evolution as a purveyor of the game’s most stirring art. He knows he has a valuable skill, and English cricket’s appetite for pace has given him additional encouragement. Saqib Mahmood, Craig Overton and Olly Stone are the current holders of three developmental fast bowling contracts, with all roads pointing to the challenge of winning again in Australia.
“I see myself as that X Factor bowler,” Barber adds. “I’m not the type who’s going to keep an end down at two runs an over. I’m going to be taking wickets, and then you have other people in the team who can do that job. My job is to really cause problems, make it really uncomfortable for the batsmen, make them feel like they don’t want to be there.
In 2018, Barber was part of the North v South series
“And so, if that brings about wickets at the other end, that’s even better. Batsmen might think they want to relax against the guy at the other end bowling 80mph and that gets the wicket, so I see myself as a strike bowler, definitely.
“I think maybe in the past people have wanted me to go at one or two per over, but here I’m very clear on what my job in the team is. There are other people who can go at those rates, where I can really attack from the other end.”
In the past, the perception from afar was that Barber was being pigeonholed as a white-ball option: the kind of bowler whose impact would be best suited to tearing in for a single, short burst. In reality, he has no such plans, and so his red-ball chance under Peter Moores represented a “really important” moment in 2020. “I see myself as a bowler who can play in all formats,” he explains. “Yes, I’ve been given more opportunities and more experience in T20 and 50-over cricket, but I think you mark yourself against your first-class statistics and wickets.”
He didn’t play in the T20 Blast as his new county finished the shortened season with a trophy to show for their efforts, but it is on his to-do list next year, having spent time picking the brain of Harry Gurney, a teammate and another very different type of left-arm seamer. He has worked hard at developing a knuckle-ball, too, as he continues to expand his armoury: “Particularly with slower balls at my pace as well, the difference in pace really is what gets the batsman.”
From the Loughborough record, Morgan’s thumb and England’s need for speed, Barber’s next phase – as “the most skilled fast bowler” he can become – could finally see heaps of potential matched by numbers.
“That’s it,” he says. “That’s what we’re working towards. To be able to take wickets with stuff that I’ve worked on for a prolonged period of time would be really nice.”
If those plans come to fruition, it will be worth watching.
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