Bob Simpson 1936-2025

GH on the Mr Cricket of his era

Versatility is an Australian cricket motif. If you bowl, you should be able to bat; if you bat, you should be able to roll your arm over; you shouldn’t be a duffer in the field. Australia may not have had a more complete cricket specimen than Bob Simpson, who has died aged eighty-nine.

In sixty-two Tests, Simpson occupied at one time or other every position in Australia’s top eight. He excelled as an opener, averaging 55 and compiling eight centuries in forty-one Tests including a triple and a double. He took 350 first-class wickets with his excellent leg-spin, thanks in part to a well-disguised googly. Only Mark Taylor may rival him as a first slip. Simpson had two spells as Australia’s captain separated by a decade, averaging 54; he was the inaugural Australian coach for almost a decade, helping restore the team to preeminence. He was a columnist, commentator, writer, agent and entrepreneur, an ICC referee and hall of famer.

He may occasionally have harboured a non-cricket thought - possibly about golf, at which he was greatly talented - but is seldom recalled sharing it. And there aren’t many funny stories about Simmo, leathery, insouciant and unregretful; he was a hard man.