They call it “catching swallows”, the capacity to sight from the edge of a cricket bat a five-and-a-half ounce missile, often propelled at 90 miles per hour, and then, a fraction of a second later – only a few yards away, and with bare hands – pluck it from the air.
It requires the reactions of a Formula One driver, the eyes of a hawk, the concentration of a chess grandmaster, and a perfect catching technique. From it emerges a mental picture of a supreme fielder diving from his habitual position at first slip to take yet another stunner for Australia. In the history of international cricket, there has been no more spectacularly efficient slip-fielder than Bob Simpson, who has died aged 89. In 62 Test matches for Australia between 1957 and 1978, he took 110 catches, a success rate of 0.94 per innnings, unmatched not just for his country, but anywhere before or since.
It was his astounding catching that defined him as a cricketer, but he was a gifted all-rounder, too. He formed the most consistently productive of all Australian opening partnerships, with Bill Lawry; he was the first player since Don Bradman to make a triple century for his country, which he managed against England in 1964; and he twice took five wickets in an innings with his legbreaks and googlies. In all Tests, he made 4,869 runs at an average of 46.81, with 10 centuries, and took 71 wickets at 42.26 apiece.
Other Australian pairings have provided more aggregate runs than Simpson and Lawry, and certainly there have been those considerably more spectacular than that grindingly efficient pair. Their alliance provided an average 60.95 runs over the 62 times they went to the wicket together. Previously in the game’s history, the England partnerships between Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe averaged an astonishing 87.81, and that between Hobbs and Wilfred Rhodes 61.31.
Over a period of more than four decades, however, Simpson’s contribution to Australian cricket was multifaceted. He captained Australia in 39 Tests, including a spell of 10 matches in the mid-1970s when, aged 41, he emerged from retirement to lead the team during the hiatus caused by Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. He became Australia’s first full time coach, transforming, through hard work and iron discipline, a rag-bag side into the best team in the world. He also worked in the media as a columnist and commentator, and as a committee man with the International Cricket Council.
Simpson was born in Sydney, to Scottish immigrant parents, Sarah (nee Duncan) and William, and raised in the suburb of Marrickville. His father, known as Jock, was a printer who had played football for Stenhousemuir in the Scottish League. Bob’s older brothers, Bill and Jack, encouraged him to play cricket, although he was also good at golf, tennis, baseball, squash and football during his schooldays at Tempe high school.
In the 1952-53 season, while still more than a fortnight shy of his 17th birthday, he made his first class debut, for New South Wales against Victoria, the second youngest player ever to be selected for the state. Limited opportunity meant that it was two years until he scored his maiden first-class century, 104 against Victoria, as a middle order batsman, and he spent four seasons from 1956-57 with Western Australia. He toured New Zealand with Australia in 1957 and then South Africa the following winter, making his Test debut in the first Test in Johannesburg.
His early Test career was unconvincing, however, and it was the great Australian left-hander Neil Harvey who advised him to try opening the batting. It coincided with an altered technique to help cope with the fast short delivery.
It was in the fourth Test at Old Trafford in 1961 that he began his partnership with Lawry – the ground on which, three years later, and by then Australia captain, he was to register his first Test century and start the transformation from a modest batsman to a very fine one. By this point, Simpson had reached his 30th Test, and his career average stood at a modest 35.93.
Now, though, he marked it by batting for more than 13 hours, longer than any Australian had managed in first-class cricket, to make an unbeaten 311 – an innings that scarcely pleased the spectators (the match, in which each side batted the other into oblivion, was one of the dullest of all draws), but which ensured Australia retained the Ashes. It transformed him: for the second half of his career, he averaged 50.89.
By the end of the 1967-68 season, following a home series against India, Simpson had decided to retire to pursue a career in journalism and public relations. However, with the advent of World Series Cricket in 1977, he was persuaded to return, and led Australia once more – a team devoid of all its stars with the exception of Jeff Thomson – first at home to India, where he made centuries in the first and fifth Tests, and then in the Caribbean, an altogether more daunting proposition. By the end of 1978, the Australian board had replaced him with Graham Yallop.
In 1986, with the national team in some disarray, having gone 14 matches without a win in the previous three years, the Australian cricket board turned once more to Simpson as their first head coach, with Allan Border as captain. As a coach, Simpson was essentially a traditionalist who concentrated on the fundamental batting, bowling, and fielding aspects of the game rather than the trend towards computer analysis and biomechanics.
He took over a young side, and through the same ethos of strong discipline and hard work that sustained his own career, he transformed them over the next decade into a formidable team, winning the 1987 World Cup in India – something which proved a catalyst for future success – regaining the Ashes in England in 1989, and, with the West Indies suffering their first series defeat in 15 years in 1994-95, now heading the finest side in the world.
He left his Australian role in 1996 and acted as a consultant to India, coached the Netherlands and then Lancashire (2000-2001), having previously in the county championship coached Leicestershire.
His final legacy, and an important one, will be his contribution to the ICC committee formed in 2001 to combat the increase in illegal bowling actions. In 2004 he was strongly critical of the ICC, arguing that it was soft; in continuing to sanction dubious actions, he said, it was nurturing more of them through imitation. A decade on, and his prescience finally bore fruit.
Simpson was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1965. He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985, the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2006 and the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2013. He was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1978, promoted to officer in 2007. He received an Australian Sports Medal in 2000 and a Centenary Medal in 2001.
In 1958 he married Meg McCarthy, and they had two daughters, Kim and Debbie.
