 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."
