John Robert Troutbeck Barclay DL (born 22 January 1954) was an English- Hong Kong

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

er, who played internationally once for

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

. John Barclay was born in

Bonn, Germany The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr ...

. He was educated at

Summer Fields School Summer Fields is a fee-paying boys' independent day and boarding preparatory school in Summertown, Oxford. It was originally called Summerfield and used to have a subsidiary school, Summerfields, St Leonards-on-Sea (known as "Summers mi"). H ...

and

Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. Eton may also refer to: Places *Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England * Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States * Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...

. He made his first-class debut for Sussex, while still at school in 1970. He was an opening batsman who never got quite as many runs as he should have, though having an excellent technique and eye. He also bowled off-spin, dismissing Ian Botham and

Viv Richards Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards (born 7 March 1952) is an Antiguan retired cricketer who represented the West Indies cricket team between 1974 and 1991. Batting generally at number three in a dominant West Indies side, Richards is widely ...

several times. He succeeded

Arnold Long Arnold Long (born 18 December 1940 in Cheam) is an English former first-class cricketer. He played for Surrey between 1960 and 1975, then spent the remainder of his career at Sussex, whom he captained between 1978 and 1980, during which time t ...

as the County Captain of Sussex County Cricket Club in 1981 and led the team to second place in the County Championship (behind

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The trad ...

). The following season he led the county to first place in the

John Player League The NatWest Pro40 League was a one-day cricket league for first-class cricket counties in England and Wales. It was inaugurated in 1999, but was essentially the old Sunday League retitled to reflect large numbers of matches being played on days ...

, Sussex only losing one game all season. Previously he had won the Gillette Cup with Sussex in 1978, dismissing Richards, bowling 12 cheap overs, and scoring 44 in the Final. He was rated as one of the best county captains around and he was tipped for the Test captaincy. He was forced to retire in 1986, due to a finger injury. Late on in his career he was involved in a small controversy in the extremely tight finish to 1984 County Championship. According to the recollection of Nottinghamshire captain

Clive Rice Clive Edward Butler Rice (23 July 1949 – 28 July 2015) was a South African international cricketer. An all-rounder, Rice ended his First Class cricket career with a batting average of 40.95 and a bowling average of 22.49. He captained Nott ...

, in Nottinghamshire's penultimate match: "We had played Sussex ... and their captain, John Barclay, had decided that, because we had beaten them to the Championship in 1981, he was not even going to give us a game. So it ended in a draw. He gave us a pathetic declaration figure." Nottinghamshire then narrowly lost their final match of the season and were pipped for the Championship by

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

. After his playing career ended he served as the Director of Cricket at the Friends of Arundel Castle Cricket Club, in tandem with the Arundel Castle Cricket Foundation (1986–2020). He has been a successful tour manager, as he took the England Under-19's, the England A's and also managed the England team for two tours. He won plaudits particularly for his role with a successful England A tour of India and Bangladesh in 1994–5,

Simon Hughes Sir Simon Henry Ward Hughes (born 17 May 1951) is a former British politician. He is now the Chancellor of London South Bank University, an External Adviser to The Open University, and UK Strategic Adviser to Talgo. Hughes was Deputy Leader ...

writing in February 1995 that Barclay "has demonstrated how valuable it is to have an empathy with the country you are in - he was still smiling even when the engine of the team bus briefly caught fire." He briefly returned to management recently with the blind team, but he is now working for the

Marylebone Cricket Club Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influence ...

(MCC). Between 1986 and his retirement in 2020, he ran a charity, the Arundel Castle Cricket Foundation for young cricketers and underprivileged children in Arundel,

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ...

. He holds a number of posts, such as president of

the Cricket Society The Cricket Society is a charitable organisation founded in 1945 as the Society of Cricket Statisticians at Great Scotland Yard, London. It has grown steadily to be the largest body of its kind in the cricket world. The Cricket Society now has mor ...

and the English Schools Cricket Association. He is a past chairman of the Sussex Cricket Board and chairman of cricket for Sussex County Cricket Club. He served as president of the

for 2009–10. He is also a governor of

Dorset House School Dorset House School is a co-educational preparatory school near Pulborough in West Sussex, England. There are 146 pupils, made up of 81 boys and 65 girls, whose ages range from 4yrs to 13yrs. History The school was founded in 1784 as Totteridge ...

, Bury, West Sussex. He is currently president of The Forty Club.

Books

* * * * Edited with Stephen Chalke (2016). ''Team Mates''. Fairfield Books.

References

External links

John Barclay
at Cricinfo
John Barclay
at CricketArchive
The Friends of Arundel Castle Cricket Club

The Arundel Castle Cricket Foundation

The Cricket Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barclay, John 1954 births English cricketers Living people Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Presidents of the Marylebone Cricket Club Sussex cricket captains Sussex cricketers Free State cricketers Deputy Lieutenants of West Sussex English cricket administrators English cricket coaches People educated at Eton College Test and County Cricket Board XI cricketers D. H. Robins' XI cricketers People educated at Summer Fields School