mid-off and mid-on reported hearing the snap of his fingers as he bowled, with the batsmen unable to read which way the ball would break. Barnes was described as more than six feet tall and maintaining an erect posture with wide shoulders, a deep chest, long arms and strong legs – in John Arlott's view, "perfectly built to be a bowler". He bowled right arm fast-medium but also had what Arlott called "the accuracy, spin and resource of a slow bowler". Barnes's high delivery provided him with a lift off the pitch that forced even the best batsmen to play him at an awkward height. He was clever at concealing his pace and could produce deliveries that were both appreciably faster and slower than his usual fast-medium pace; and could bowl an effective yorker. Barnes considered himself essentially a spin bowler as he bowled both the off-break and the leg-break, but at a fast pace. Although technically formidable, Barnes allied his skillset to a hostile persona and great stamina which, Arlott says, "were reflected in constant, unrelenting probing for a batsman's weakness and then attacking it by surprise, each ball fitting into a tactical pattern". In Barnes's era, the same ball would be used for the whole of a team's innings, with no new ball, although bowlers were assisted by the unpredictability of uncovered pitches. Harry Altham wrote of Barnes's bowling: "At appreciably more than medium pace he could, even in the finest weather and on the truest wickets in Australia, both swing and break the ball from off or leg. Most deadly of all was the ball which he would deliver from rather wide on the crease, move in with a late swerve the width of the wicket, and then straighten back off the ground to hit the off stump". Bernard Hollowood played alongside Barnes for Staffordshire in the 1930s and quoted his father, Albert Hollowood, who had been Barnes's Staffordshire captain before the First World War, as saying: "Oh, yes, he could bowl 'em all, but he got his wickets with fast leg-breaks. Marvellous, absolutely marvellous, he was. Fast leg-breaks and always on a length". The great Australian batsman Clem Hill told Neville Cardus that, on a perfect wicket, Barnes could swing the new ball in and out "very late", could spin from the ground, pitch on the leg stump and miss the off. This is evidence of