The bespectacled Barlow was both a popular and easily recognisable figure in South African cricket from the 1960s onwards – a prodigious run-maker and frequent wicket-taker, he was one of the leading all-rounders on the world stage in the 1960s. Louis Duffus said Barlow "did more than anyone else to break down the timid defensive tactics which for so many years kept South Africa a second-rate cricket country".