With its complicated political problems Alan Smith was made the manager of the tour to the West Indies in 1980–81. For financial reasons there was no assistant manager, but Barrington was appointed after representations from the team, though Stuart Surridge asked him not to go as the strain would be too much. He passed a medical, was eager for another tour and had been a teammate of Smith's in the 1962–63 Ashes series. He got on well with Botham, who wrote "He would fetch me a cup of tea...sit on the bench in the dressing room, raise a point and we would argue about it. A quarter of an hour later I'd find myself doing as he said".