The story of Barney Gibson, England's youngest first-class cricketer, who left the game for freedom

NICK FRIEND: When Gibson made his Yorkshire debut a decade ago, aged 15 years and 27 days, he became the youngest person to make a first-class appearance in England - in a field of 16,051 players. He never played again, and this is his story

“I didn’t understand what I’d achieved at that age. Still to this day, I don’t think I realise the value of my record because I was just a boy. It was pure enjoyment.”

Ten years ago, Barney Gibson made history as English cricket’s youngest-ever first-class player. He was a child in a man’s game: a diminutive wicketkeeper with a boyband fringe, a cheeky smile and not a care in the world. Cricket was just cricket: a sport at which he excelled and, as his reputation soared, became the centre of his childhood.

All roads led to Durham MCCU’s Racecourse ground, where he stepped out for Yorkshire in a 10-wicket win over the university side in April 2011. In taking the gloves, he shattered a landmark that had stood since 1867, previously held by Hampshire’s Charles Young.

Gibson was 15 years and 27 days old. And of the 16,051 cricketers who have played the first-class game in England, none have been younger.

Only, he never played again. Instead, four years later at the beginning of 2015, he left the sport. He was 19 – it was his decision, a severance of ties on his own terms. One first-class appearance, one ball faced, one run, six catches.

He is an adult now, with a stubbly beard, expertise across three different industries and a business of his own. Lingering in the background is a record unlikely ever to be broken, especially with first-class status no longer attributed to MCCU fixtures.

Quite simply, he and cricket fell out of love: no animosity; no blame attached to either party; just the end of a road. But there is so much more to tell in this story, and so much for elite sport to learn. Because this is a fascinating tale about the purity of youth told by the same child who became an unwitting piece of trivia, only with the benefit of a decade’s hindsight, self-analysis and experience of the real world.

“I could have decided to stay and woken up one day not being able to walk again,” he tells The Cricketer. “And then what? But people would have looked at that differently to walking away from it, when really I just wasn’t enjoying it anymore.

“But I don’t think I realised how much I wasn’t enjoying it until I didn’t have to go to training, until I didn’t have to put in the extra hours, which at one point was something that I really wanted to do. It wasn’t until I’d done it and it had taken its toll that I realised how much hard work does go into being a professional athlete.”

^{A teenage Barney Gibson keeps wicket in an intra-squad practice match, with Andrew Gale batting}

As a teenager also on Leeds United’s books as a goalkeeper, his entire existence had been devoted to academy sport until the moment he decided it was no longer for him. So much so that it was all he knew and all his family could foresee. Having started so young, it was engrained in him.

“It wasn’t until I got to the age of 18 that I asked myself: ‘Is this what I’m going to be doing forever?’” Gibson recalls. “I think it was just a case of no longer enjoying what I used to wake up looking forward to doing every day.”

Until then, it was paradise. “I was playing sport seven days per week, which at the time – at the age of 11, 12, 13 – is every boy’s dream: I was having days off school from a young age.

“I was involved in academy sport from the age of six, so from six to 19 I was travelling to play football four to five times per week and then cricket as well.”

And ultimately, the joy ran out: he had never experienced proper freedom while immersed in his bubble, travelling regularly to Wetherby and Headingley for training across two different sports. “I was involved around professionals in such a serious environment from such a young age,” he explains. “Even back in my footballing days, I was only seven, eight, nine, 10 years old but I was rubbing shoulders at Leeds with Kevin Blackwell, Harry Kewell and people like that.”

The notion of freedom crops up regularly in our conversation but not with any sense of resentment. Rather, the thrill he took from his discovery of a wider world was proof that he had been right to let go when he did.

There are no regrets, even if he does still wonder what his sporting self might have achieved. He admits: “Something I always ask to this day is: if I was still playing football, where would I be? If I was still playing cricket, where would I be? Just from a pure curiosity perspective, it would be interesting to see where I’d be right now if I was still doing one or the other.”

"For me to be able to walk away from it at that age, I don't think deep down that I did want it"

Gibson left Yorkshire without an idea of what might come next. He calls it “a big eye-opener”, but that void was what he needed.

“I didn’t really have much of a plan for what I wanted to do; it was more just having a bit of freedom for the first time,” he says. “That’s what I was excited about. I was still in college, so I was still studying. I just felt like the pressure and the lack of freedom that I had at that age led me to making the decision where I no longer wanted to do it.”

During the months before his exit, he had become more involved in the nightlife scene, promoting club nights and events as a part-time job; in his athlete mindset, it felt like a forbidden fruit, but it was a world to which he was immediately drawn.

“It was something I just really enjoyed because it just offered a bit of freedom,” he says. “Being honest, I think I let that take more control of my cricket. It was like: ‘Oh, this freedom’s good.’

“People will say that you can still experience these things as an athlete; you hear stories of athletes being out all the time. But at the time I think I just thought that I couldn’t be doing that. I didn’t think I could enjoy the experiences that I wanted to enjoy.

“For me, that was when I said to myself from a cricket point of view: ‘You know what, I’m just not enjoying this anymore.’ I felt like it was becoming more of a chore. I have no doubt that there are people playing professional sport at the moment who absolutely hate it, but it’s paying the bills. But that wasn’t part of my thinking back then.

“Now, I understand the value of money a bit more, stepping into a corporate job. But at the time, that wasn’t an option for me because I’d never seen anything else other than professional sport. That was all I knew – that I was going to play professional sport. There wasn’t going to be anything else that came along with it.”

This is a central aspect of Gibson’s story: he is unfailingly impressive company, happy and confident in the path he has taken, insightful on how he came to drift away from the game he seemed destined to play.

Since cricket, he has worked full-time in the nightlife sector, including a six-month stint in Marbella: “I just wanted to enjoy myself and maybe catch up on a couple of years which I felt like I’d missed out on. From a freedom perspective, that was the main thing that I felt I lacked, and it was the main thing that I felt like I got back when I hung up my playing boots. I did just enjoy myself for a couple of years, which I did think I needed.”

When he returned from Spain “to start thinking about my career”, he began in recruitment, where he spent three successful years. Most recently, he has set up two businesses. One of them, The Training Club, has aspirations to become the world’s leading sustainable activewear brand, focusing on eco-friendly manufacturers and ethically sourced materials, as well as electric vans to deliver their products.

He highlights his grounding in an academy setup as key in his early accomplishments as an entrepreneur. “Because I had to act in a professional manner from such a young age, you take those skills into everyday life – that was the norm for me,” he says.

And having made his debut so early, Gibson had ambitions to play at the highest level, but he was too young for the more practical thoughts of employment to cross his mind. Instead, cricket was fun and a fundamental pillar of his youth; being thrust into the first team picture at 15 didn’t change that. “I think experiencing what I experienced from such a young age, at the time I had no real understanding that it’s a profession and a job,” he muses. When he was picked to face Durham MCCU, he had to apply for special dispensation from his school.

“It wasn’t until I went into a corporate job that I realised that sometimes you just have shit days when you really don’t want to do it. But you’ve got to stick at it because what else are you going to do? I didn’t have that responsibility.”

Yet, what if he’d known then what he does now? Might he have stayed on at Yorkshire out of pragmatism?

“I don’t think I would because I don’t have any regrets at all,” he explains. “I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason. I could have been released as a footballer and thought that was the end of the world. I could have not made it as a professional cricketer, not developed and not experienced what I wanted to experience.”

And so, enjoyment was everything. He remembers the day he quit football, having emerged as an unlikely goalkeeping prospect. He had been thrown in goal for Rothwell Juniors as a six-year-old despite being an outfield player. From then on, that was his position: he represented Leeds, Huddersfield Town and Manchester United, before he had to make his choice at nine years of age. Nine. It is so much so young.

“I don’t think I realised what I was doing at that age,” he adds. “I was like: ‘I support Leeds, so why wouldn’t I play for Leeds?’ So, I signed my first contract and I played two age-groups above.

^{Gibson (circled) with his Leeds United teammates - among them is Sheffield United striker Oli McBurnie (top right); right, Gibson bats as a 15-year-old against Durham MCCU (Credit: SWPix.com)}

“I remember playing an under-13 game – I must have only been 11. The coach was really hard on me and I think I just had a moment. I knew I didn’t want to do it anymore; I wasn’t enjoying it and it was taking away the value of the fun that I had. I was being treated like a teenager when really I was still just a boy in primary school. I remember going home and I was so upset.

“I was just like: ‘I really don’t enjoy this anymore, I don’t want to do it.’ I think part of it was that age pressure of being such a young lad and being thrown into an environment like that so soon. The enjoyment side of it just went completely out of the window.”

Reflecting all these years on, however, Gibson wonders whether he ever wanted to make it in professional football. A goalkeeper by little more than chance, he effectively fell into it.

“Whenever I’ve played since then, I’ve always wanted to play outfield,” he laughs. “Deep down, I knew from the age of seven that I didn’t want to be a professional goalkeeper; I just knew I was very good at it.”

It brings him back to cricket, and the same question. Few players make it so far before voluntarily giving it all up. It was an unquestionably brave decision that went against the grain. Did he, in his heart of hearts, want to go any further?

“For me to be able to walk away from it at that age, I don’t think deep down that I did want it,” he admits, pausing for thought.

And yet, until his life-changing decision, Gibson continued to push himself as hard as he could.

“My game improved right up until I decided to call it quits,” he says. Paul Farbrace had joined Yorkshire in 2012 as part of the new backroom structure, with Jason Gillespie arriving as first team coach. As a former wicketkeeper himself, Farbrace and Gibson worked together regularly.

They would pencil in extra sessions three times per week on top of all scheduled training “because I wanted to do that”. Around the same period, his batting improved exponentially. He had never made a hundred for the county but then hit five in the season before he quit. “It was off the back of working my socks off,” he adds.

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“It wasn’t until that winter, where I was going out and doing the promotion side of things, that I was like: ‘Wow, there is so much more that I feel like I’ve not done yet.’ I started training again and it wasn’t until then, even though I was performing better than I’d ever performed, that I had this eye-opener.

“There were a couple of times when I wasn’t feeling training; I remember one time where my fitness was down, so they got me in to do a couple of sessions. I made excuses not to go to the sessions, which was unlike me. Everyone knew that I was one of the hardest-working individuals in the academy in terms of extra-curricular work, whether that was my keeping, batting or fitness. Whatever it was to better myself, I’d always been the first person in there. People knew me as that hard-worker.”

Gibson was pulled aside by academy coaches Ian Dews and Richard Damms, who asked him what was going on; the upshot of their conversation was that he would miss a pre-season camp in Spain.

“I was just like: ‘This isn’t for me,’” he remembers. “There was a reason why I hadn’t done it, and it was that I didn’t want to do it anymore. They gave me six weeks off to have a think about it. Being honest, for me, those six weeks were just a case of not having a care in the world about anything and just enjoying that freedom.

“At the end of it, I didn’t want to go back. I was finished. I made the decision that it was going to be my last day at the club after the six weeks. It was left on really good terms; I couldn’t ask anything more of the club. It wasn’t anything that they did. I think it was just more a case of the game itself and what I wanted to do with myself. It was a personal thing.

“I could never blame anyone at the club for me making the decision I did. I’m grateful for the opportunity still to this day, which they gave me.

“There was nothing that had an impact on my decision other than myself. I think deep down the people around me and the people I was speaking to at the time, I don’t think they thought they could do anything to keep me there. I think they knew that was it from the way I was talking.”

The notion of retirement, however, has troubled Gibson ever since. You will notice that during the course of this piece, this is the only time at which his Yorkshire departure is given that tag. “Because to me it wasn’t,” he explains.

"I don't think I realised how much I wasn't enjoying it until I didn't have to go to training, until I didn't have to put in the extra hours"

In the press release documenting his exit, it was coined as a “career change” to “pursue other career opportunities”. But media headlines elsewhere gave it more finality, which made the moment difficult for his parents to deal with – a blunt term that caused its own confusion.

“To see it worded like that at such a young age, God, I wish I had the money to be sat somewhere now retired,” he says. “To me, that’s what it meant. If someone said to me that I’m retired now, I’d look at it a damn sight differently to what I did back when I first saw that in a newspaper.

“I didn’t understand it. Did it mean that I wasn’t going to do anything else? I wasn’t sat on a pension fund; I wasn’t sat on an enormous amount of money that was going to set me up for life; I wasn’t going to move abroad and live a happy life with a wife and three kids as a 19-year-old. I just thought I had quit playing. But it was worded differently. When people asked me what happened, I’d just say that I’d quit because I didn’t enjoy it anymore. That was the short answer to it.”

As it happened, he took two years away from the game entirely, before returning to league cricket for a short period. He joined Methley and later moved back to Pudsey Congs, his boyhood club. It was enjoyable again and he only stopped playing at the end of the 2019 season when work became too busy.

By then, Gibson was a fully-fledged adult, worlds away from the boy who made history on debut. Age fascinates him – how slight he must have been up against the stature of his colleagues; Ajmal Shahzad, a teammate in his solitary appearance, had featured for England at a World Cup four weeks earlier.

“I was 15 years old,” he laughs, still almost with a hint of disbelief, though immensely proud. “I didn’t really know what was happening. For me, I was really enjoying myself, I was having the opportunity to play with some of the people I was playing with and then they said: ‘We want you to travel up and play with the first team.’ I was like: ‘This is amazing.’ I didn’t really think twice about it.

“I had all the press coverage, but I look back at me as a 15-year-old and I look back at some of the stuff that I saw in the papers and in old interviews. I hadn’t gone through puberty. It’s crazy to even think about it.”

^{Gibson keeps wicket on debut, with Gary Ballance at first slip}

His brother, Frankie, is 18 now and plays rugby league at a high level. He is taller, more mature and physically stronger than Barney was at the same age. “But if I were to see a 15-year-old,” he interjects, “I’d think: ‘How on earth could they possibly do what I did at my age?’ For me, that’s scary to think. It was a massive achievement to do what I did, but after that I didn’t really think about my career with Yorkshire. It was just about playing cricket; I didn’t care who I was playing cricket for. I was enjoying it at the time.”

Part of the reason that the first-team step-up felt so unspectacular was exactly that. Gibson had come through the ranks, having appeared for the county second team and in the Bradford League. So, when he took to the field alongside now-seasoned pros Gary Ballance, Oliver Hannon-Dalby and Alex Lees, it was just another game in the packed calendar of a talented junior cricketer.

“I was used to it being tough. That’s why, to this day, I don’t think I truly understand it.”

It gave him a slice of history, however – something him and his father often discuss together. “He’s under the impression that I’ll hold this record for a long period of time,” Gibson explains, “and that I’ll be able to live on it probably until the day I die. There will be relationships and networks that I can tap back into with the backing of such a substantial thing. I might not be playing now, but to some people in the cricket world, it is something they will never forget.”

Gibson speaks openly about his relationship with his dad and how it has grown far stronger in recent years. Initially, his parents struggled to comprehend his decision to move on: an inadvertent subplot to raising a boy-wonder.

“There was always so much pressure,” he recalls. “Not only did I want to impress who I wanted to impress in terms of coaching staff, but I wanted to impress my parents. I wanted them to see how well I was doing, but there was so much pressure coming from that and it did allow our relationship to deteriorate.

“It was a hard thing for them to take, but I think it was because they wanted the best for me, that they couldn’t see anything else for me other than professional sport.”

"I look back at me as a 15-year-old and I look back at some of the stuff in the newspapers and old interviews: I hadn't gone through puberty"

As parents and his biggest supporters, they had witnessed the talents of their son and his progression through the ranks at Leeds and Yorkshire – the region’s two biggest sporting institutions. And both times, he had opted to walk away.

“They had traipsed me up and down the country and they saw me work hard to improve my game, so for me to turn around and say I didn’t want to do it – for a second time, I think it was hard for them to take.

“For them, it was like: ‘Well, what’s he going to do? He’s 19, he doesn’t really have education as a back-up.’ I’d gone to college but never went to university or anything like that. It’s only over the last two or three years and now being in the position that I’m in with my businesses that they have realised that there is more out there than just professional sport.”

And if he proves successful in this next chapter, one key wish is to reimburse his parents for their years as personal chauffeurs. Since leaving the game, he has wondered whether he realised at the time how much effort went into developing his potential from those around him – his parents and coaches, who “put so much into giving me the best opportunity to succeed”.

He reflects: “I felt like I had let them down. That’s not really something that I ever thought about until a couple of years after I had stopped playing, once I’d had those years of doing my own thing.

“They felt like I’d walked away from it too early and I’d not given them the opportunity to reap the rewards of being proud parents and seeing their kid perform at the highest level of sport he possibly could have played at.

“I still feel to this day that no matter what financial rewards I eventually achieve in business, I would love nothing more than to pay them back for everything that they did for me, which I didn’t necessarily appreciate when I was younger.”

The pressures of growing up in an academy environment make for a difficult balancing act. He has seen a marked difference in the treatment of Frankie’s fledgling rugby league exploits: “My dad’s been a lot better with my little brother than he was with me because he’s seen what I’ve been through in terms of potentially wanting it a lot more than I did. And that was for no benefit of his other than just thinking it was the best for me.”

"It wasn't until I got to the age of 18 that I asked myself: 'Is this what I'm going to be doing forever?'

Gibson wonders, too, how he might approach a similar situation when fatherhood comes his way. He has witnessed the highs and lows of youth sport first-hand – the enjoyment it gave him, the determination he possessed and also what he felt he missed out on in the process.

“I think as a parent, I’d be a lot more understanding if my boy or girl was to turn to me and say they didn’t want to do this anymore – because I’ve probably experienced what they’re feeling,” he explains.

“If they want to be the best Premier League footballer, I’ll be all for it and I’ll take them wherever they need to be under whatever circumstances – if they want to do it. But there would never be a pressure or an expectation from me for them to have to do that. If it’s not for them, it isn’t for them. And I will not have an opinion on it.

“I’d love to give my kids everything, but I would always make them work for it. And that’s just from what I’ve experienced and being given it all by my parents – not necessarily the materialistic, tangible things, but knowing what they’ve given me in terms of traipsing up and down the country. I took that for granted, 100 per cent.”

Ultimately, Gibson didn’t follow the path that – through his teenage years – seemed a natural, foregone conclusion. Instead, he prioritised enjoyment and freedom.

It is a part of his childhood that he looks back upon proudly and fondly: the doors it has opened, the skills it has given him, the record that might just be his forever, the courage in letting it go.

Phase two is well underway, a decade on from his week in the headlines and five years after coming to understand that there was more to the world than he had known.

“I was just a 15-year-old lad stepping out for another game of cricket,” he laughs. “Playing a first-class game, for me, I really didn’t think too much of it. I remember everything: it’s a memory that I won’t forget.

“And now, I’m hopefully stepping into the most exciting year of my life.”

^{Top image credit: SWPix.com}