Style and Achievements
Barber scored a total of 16,402 runs in his career with 29 hundreds and 182 catches, and was described by Gerald Howat as "the fourth pillar" of the Yorkshire batting in the mid-1930s (after Herbert Sutcliffe, Maurice Leyland and Arthur Mitchell). A generally defensive batsman, he played carefully in the tradition of Yorkshire opening batsmen. Jim Kilburn said that Barber was "small in stature but upright in style". He was a good batsman on the off side and had a very good defensive technique, while his strength on the leg side was noted on his Test debut. Although an opening batsman, he often went in lower down the batting order. He was more comfortable in normal circumstances than in a crisis and did not enjoy batting on difficult pitches. Bill Bowes called him the most correct and orthodox batsman he had seen, even more so than Len Hutton. Barber was a kind, modest man, who never believed that his contribution was good enough, even if he had scored a century. On his death, Wisden described him as having "rendered admirable service."
Barber's highest score was 255 against Surrey in 1935. In this innings, he opened the batting and shared three successive century partnerships. Barber also scored 248 against Kent in 1934. He had scored 73 in the first innings but Kent had built up a lead of 148 on the second day of the match. Barber, opening the batting with Len Hutton, scored 248 and shared a stand of 267 for the first wicket. As a result, Yorkshire drew the game. Barber shared in seven other century opening partnerships Yorkshire, four of them with Arthur Mitchell, and six other 200 partnerships. This included a stand of 346 in four and a half hours with Maurice Leyland, against Middlesex in 1932 which was a record for Yorkshire's second wicket. His fielding, generally done in the deep, was described by Wisden as "first rate". Bowes said that he once went for nearly three years without dropping a catch on the leg side boundary from his bowling.
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