When Keith Barker and his older brother Dean were growing up, their dad was a stickler for good behaviour in the house. If they were playing cricket though, it was a different story – a smashed ornament here, a broken mirror there, he never said a word.
But from the moment Dean taught four-year-old Keith his first stepover, cricket had a rival. Keith turned down the opportunity of a Lancashire contract aged 16 and threw himself into football, playing England Under-18, Under-19 and Under-20 games, and signing for Blackburn Rovers. But the dream of regularly slotting in goals as a professional slipped between his fingers, between the vagaries of new management, luck and fancy.
Football’s loss was cricket’s gain, and on Thursday Barker starts his 15th summer as a professional cricketer, when Hampshire entertain Nottinghamshire at the Rose Bowl in the first round of this year’s County Championship.
“I’m feeling pretty good,” he says, “We’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes, the lads are raring to go. We’ve been pushing for the trophy for a while, we’re close, it has twice been within our reach.”
Hampshire last won the Championship in 1973, but have been in the mix over the last few years, spearheaded by one of the best attacks in the country – with Barker, Kyle Abbott and Mohammad Abbas pawing the ground at the top of their marks, each capable of causing havoc, each finishing with 50-plus first-class wickets last season.
“I remember, before we signed Mo Abbas, saying: ‘Imagine having Abbas and Abbott in the same team, it would be phenomenal’ – and it is. Their skills are unbelievable and they are so consistent in what they do, it is rare they miss.
“You’ve got three bowlers who could open the bowling very easily, some weeks it could be Abbo and Mo, some weeks could be me and Mo. As Abbo might say, I don’t care how we do it, just get off the pitch. It’s good: Abbo is very attacking, I do it my way and Mo is just so skilful.”
Barker found his way during his 10 years at Warwickshire, under the tutelage of Graeme Welch, the former Warwickshire and Derbyshire all-rounder. “He was adamant that I didn’t start bowling the varieties yet as a young player and his words were: ‘When you get older you’ll be able to bowl whatever you want as accurately as you want’ and that’s maybe what’s happening now.” And those varieties? He shakes his head – they’re a trade secret.
The County Championship has been in for a rough ride over the last few years, with fierce internal battles between traditionalists and those who support the Strauss review. But Barker, part of the team that lost that humdinger to Warwickshire on the last day of the 2022 season, sending Yorkshire spiralling down to Division Two, doesn’t see a competition that needs much fiddling with.
“It is really competitive, it’s got more exciting over the last few years. There have been quite a lot of tight finishes, every result really does matter, you have to be on it. When it comes to the end of the season, even if you aren’t pushing for the title, teams are desperate to stay up. That game against Warwickshire last year, we walked off thinking: ‘What happened? How have we ended up not winning that game?’”
He’s keen on the trial of the Kookaburra ball for two rounds in June and July. “They had to do something, I think Dukes kind of took their foot off the pedal as there was no competition. For the last five years, balls have kept getting soft, getting worse, but from what I’ve heard they’ve found out what was wrong and corrected it. It’s interesting that’s happened now they are trialling a different brand of ball.”
We speak a few days before the release of the Cricket Discipline Commission verdicts, and I ask if how he has experienced discrimination in cricket. “It is not that people have said stuff, but being a black person, you become very aware how people can perceive you, just from how they look without speaking to you, you can be made to feel a little bit standoffish. As a sportsman you become aware of it and don’t really say anything because sometimes it can be a tough conversation to have or to approach.” And of the ECB’s efforts to make the game more equitable? “It is too early to say.”
Barker has signed a contract extension until 2024, when he’ll be 38, and he’s philosophical about the future, full of admiration for the young bowlers coming through at Hampshire who will one day replace him.
“Football is brutal – it helped me coming into cricket. I was surprised to see when you had lunch that as a second-team player you could sit next to a first-team player and have a conversation. It wasn’t like that at Blackburn. I work on my game, know what I need to prove, listen to the coach, work hard in the areas I feel weak at. When I came into cricket, I thought: ‘Well, I’ve got a two-year contract – if I can play one or two one-day games I’ll be happy with that.’”
Fifteen summers on, while most of his peers who stuck with football have retired, he’s more than proved himself.
