'He made Australian cricket great': Former Test captain and coach Bob Simpson dies, aged 89
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Former Australian Test cricket captain and coach Bob Simpson has died. He was 89.
Allan Border, Steve Waugh and Anthony Albanese are among the many who've have paid tribute to a man who became a giant of Australian cricket in the back half of the 20th century.
Robert Baddeley Simpson, born in Marrickville in Sydney's inner west, played 62 Tests between 1957 and 1978.
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An opening batter with a superb hook shot and a relentless appetite for accumulating singles, Simpson scored 4869 Test runs, including 10 centuries and 27 half-centuries, at an average of 46.81.
And although he took 30 Tests to make his first century, he scored 311 in that breakthrough innings at Old Trafford during the 1964 Ashes.
Bob Simpson (left) and Sir Donald Bradman pictured in 1965. Fairfax
In first-class cricket, he tallied 21,029 runs, including 60 centuries, 100 half-centuries and a top score of 359, at an average of 56.22.
In 1977, at the age of 41, he emerged from retirement to captain Australia in a second stint, when Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket stripped the Test team of a host of its leading players.
He wasn't only a top-class opening batter, but an outstanding slips fielder and a handy leg-spinner.
And he was a great mentor for a young Shane Warne, taking the chubby Victorian with blonde hair under his wing and helping set him up for his legendary career as a leg-spinner and slips fielder.
Simpson was in the mid-1980s installed as the first full-time coach of the Australian team.
Exposing captain Border's side to the tough discipline that he had always carried in his playing career, the revolutionary coach led Australian cricket out of the doldrums.
Allan Border (left) and Bob Simpson, captain and coach of the Australian team, pictured in 1987. Fairfax
Under the steely guise of "Simmo", Australia won the 1987 World Cup in India, reclaimed the Ashes on English soil in 1989, and defeated the West Indies in the Caribbean to reclaim the Frank Worrell Trophy. Australia has held the trophy ever since.
"No one gave more to Australian cricket than Bob Simpson - coach, player, commentator, writer, selector, mentor and journalist," Steve Waugh, who played under Simpson in the Test side in the 1980s and '90s, wrote on Instagram.
"He was quite simply the best cricket coach with an unparalleled knowledge of the game together with an insatiable appetite for learning and imparting his wisdom.
"He made me a better player and he made Australian cricket great.
"RIP Simmo."
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Border hailed the influence of Simpson as coach.
"It was perfect timing for me personally as the captain," Border recalled.
"I was all things to the team for a year or two — maybe not in my character to be like that. He was the sergeant major — a disciplinarian. He worked our backsides off and it paid dividends."
Bob Simpson in 1992, during his time as Australia's coach. Nine
Albanese said Simpson's "extraordinary service to Australian cricket spanned generations".
"As a player, captain and then era-defining coach, he set the highest standards for himself and the champions he led," the prime minister wrote on X.
"He will be long remembered by the game he loved.
"May he rest in peace."
Cricket Australia chairman Mike Baird also paid tribute.
"Bob Simpson was one of the greats of Australian cricket and this is a sad day for anyone fortunate to have watched him play or who benefited from his wisdom," Simpson said in a CA statement.
"As a brilliant opening batter, incredible slips fielder and handy spin bowler, Bob was a mainstay of a very strong Australian team in the 1960s, and he became a leader across the game as Australian and New South Wales captain and as a coach.
"Bob's decision to come out of retirement to successfully lead the Australian team during the advent of World Series Cricket in 1977 was a wonderful service to the game, and his coaching set the foundation for a golden era for Australian cricket.
"On behalf of Cricket Australia, I would like to express my warmest condolences to Bob's family, friends, teammates and all those touched by his vast contribution to cricket."
Simpson was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1978 and an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007. He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985 and joined the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2006.
