Bob Simpson died on August 16, 2025, aged 89. He played 62 Test matches and two ODIs and captained and coached Australia, and was remembered in the 2026 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.
SIMPSON, ROBERT BADDELEY, AO, MBE, died on August 16, aged 89. First-class debut at 16, Test triple-century, two spells as national captain, World Cup-winning coach and beyond … Bob Simpson’s contribution to Australian cricket has been matched only by Don Bradman and Richie Benaud. And he was as single-minded as both. “He may occasionally have harboured a non-cricket thought, possibly about golf, but is seldom recalled sharing it,” wrote Gideon Haigh. Steve Waugh was in no doubt: “No one gave more to Australian cricket than Bob Simpson – player, coach, commentator, writer, selector, mentor and journalist. 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.”
Simpson inherited his work ethic from his parents, who had emigrated to Sydney from Scotland, where father Jock, a printer, had played league football for Stenhousemuir. Some early puppy fat earned Simpson the nickname “Pud”, which stuck – at least until the inevitable “Simmo” – but he was instantly competitive, playing for Sydney schoolboys at nine, and making his first century the following year. In January 1953, not quite 17, he made his first-class debut for New South Wales against Victoria at the SCG, scoring 44 and eight, both not out. In that game, Australia captain-elect Ian Johnson became the first of 349 victims for his more than useful leg-breaks.
At first, Simpson was a dasher, but he eventually learned to play the percentages, becoming difficult to shift. He stopped hooking, generally swaying away from short balls. “I never saw him hit a crashing cover-drive,” said Keith Stackpole, “but anything on his leg stump was four runs.” After a modest trot in 1955/56, Simpson tried a bold gambit for the time, and moved across to Western Australia: 572 runs in his first season won a trip to New Zealand with an Australia B-team, then a promotion to the Test side in South Africa. In the lead-up to the Tests, his usually infallible slip catching let him down, but he held on to 13 in the series itself. “I wanted that ball to come to me, no matter what,” he said, and sometimes let it hit him before clasping it to his chest. “I got as much pleasure out of taking a really good catch as I did scoring runs.”
After an accomplished 60 in his first innings at Johannesburg, Simpson scored just 76 more in the series, and was dropped after a seven-ball duck in his only match of the 1958/59 Ashes. Plenty of runs for Western Australia, including successive double-centuries against New South Wales and Queensland in 1959/60, saw him restored to the national side for the tied Test with West Indies in November 1960, when he opened for the first time, and made 92. He was facing Wes Hall in his prime: Simpson and Bradman thought he had a unique ability to extract lift from a good length, and Simpson called a chapter in one of his books “Facing Hall was Hell”.
More useful scores – and those safe hands – kept Simpson in the side, but there was a monkey on his back: no century in his first 29 Tests. By then he was Australia’s captain, having replaced the retiring Richie Benaud during the 1963/64 home season. He rectified the omission in style in the fourth Test at Old Trafford in 1964, when Australia needed only a draw to retain the Ashes. “I don’t know of any player who was on the international scene as long as I without scoring a century,” said Simpson. “I was feeling a bit silly about it by this stage. I’d promised myself that when I did get a hundred, I’d make it a biggie.” And he did, batting for more than 12 hours, before reaching 300 with his 22nd four. He eventually perished on the third morning for 311, after 762 minutes. It was only the third triple for Australia, after two by Bradman, and remains their longest Test innings. “The wicket was as slow as treacle,” said Australia’s wicketkeeper Wally Grout. “Simmo took root at the crease, and we marvelled at the determination of the man who at 200 looked as run-hungry as when he had started batting ten hours before.” It was one of a dozen 200-plus scores in his career, the highest 359 for New South Wales against Queensland (who had just run up 613) at Brisbane in 1963/64.
Simpson retained the Ashes in 1965/66, but either side of that lost in the West Indies (despite a double-century at Bridgetown, in an opening stand of 382 with Bill Lawry) and South Africa. Some were unimpressed with his captaincy style. On the 1966/67 South African tour, seamer Neil Hawke told journalist RS Whitington: “This is the happiest team I’ve been with, so far as 15 members are concerned. Bob Simpson – he’s not one of us. We can’t work him out.” Haigh observed: “There aren’t many funny stories about Simmo, leathery, insouciant and unregretful; he was a hard man.”
There was less debate about his batting. “Simpson is the best all-round batsman I played with or against, and the best judge of a run in international cricket,” wrote his long-time opening partner Lawry. “Possibly his only flaw is that he does not relish sheer pace, but I have yet to meet any batsman who really does.” State team-mate Doug Walters thought Simpson “a wonderful player to watch – his bat seemed to be wider than most others”.
Not long after being appointed captain, Simpson had decided to bow out before the 1968 Ashes tour, and kept his word, announcing his retirement at 31. “I could begin on the outside again by signing myself up for some lucrative newspaper contracts,” he reasoned, covering the England tour for a newspaper and writing a book about it. Cricket writer Ray Robinson was not surprised he had carried out this long-arranged plan: “More than most players, he has a mind of his own. Once he makes it up, I doubt whether any persuasion could lure it back, or cancel half a line.”
It seemed the Simpson story was over, after 52 Tests, 4,131 runs and 99 catches. But he continued to pile up the runs for the Western Suburbs club in Sydney and, ten years after his initial retirement, made a dramatic return as Australia’s captain in 1977/78, when most of the Test team signed up for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. At 41, Simpson was worried he might no longer be up to the challenge, but Australia’s first opponents were India, and he had always been an excellent player of spin. An intriguing series unfolded between the otherwise inexperienced hosts and the tourists’ slow bowlers. In the second Test at Perth, Simpson made a resounding 176, and held his 100th Test catch. “It was not my best innings, by a long shot, but in the context of the game a vital and satisfying one for me. The longer I batted, the better my footwork became.”
He added another century in the Fifth Test as Australia won 3-2, finishing with 539 runs at 53: the only older man to score more in a Test series was Jack Hobbs, who made 573 in the 1924/25 Ashes aged 42. After some hesitation, Simpson agreed to lead the West Indian tour that followed, and predictably found the going harder against their largely pace-oriented attack. Still, his callow team came close to squaring the series: the final Test was called off because of crowd trouble with Australia one wicket short of victory and 38 balls remaining.
With England due Down Under in 1978/79, and WSC grabbing headlines with their innovation of floodlit games, Simpson said he would continue if appointed for the whole series. This was not the Australian way, and the board demurred, saying he would have to be considered for selection, like everyone else. So Simpson retired again, for good: “I did not have enough confidence in the selectors to leave my fate in their hands.”
Even now, his story was far from over. With Australian cricket in the doldrums in the mid-1980s, following the almost simultaneous retirements of Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh, Simpson was asked to help the inexperienced new captain, Allan Border. In 1986, he became Australia’s first full-time coach, completing a unique double by being closely involved in Test cricket’s second tie, at Madras in 1986/87, after playing in the first, in 1960/61. The following season, Border’s side pulled off a surprise World Cup victory, then won four successive Ashes series; early in 1995, they wrested back the Frank Worrell Trophy by beating West Indies for the first time in 19 years. Simpson bowed out after the 1996 World Cup, where Australia lost in the final. “I was luckier than most,” he said. “It’s not just that I’ve seen everyone from Miller and Harvey to Ponting and Warne, but I’ve actually shared a dressing-room with them, seen them close up, been able to learn what makes them special.”
Far from winding down, Simpson took on more assignments. He was a consultant for India at the 1999 World Cup, had spells with Rajasthan and the Netherlands, and coached New South Wales at home, and Lancashire and Leicestershire in England. According to David Frith, he was “widely seen as a disciplinarian who placed huge emphasis on fielding and fitness”.
Simpson produced several books, including his 1966 autobiography Captain’s Story, which had to be withdrawn and revised after former Test team-mate Ian Meckiff, who had been no-balled for throwing, objected to part of a chapter entitled “Chuckers”. Simpson married Meg McCarthy in 1957; she survived him, as did their two daughters, Debbie and Kim, who married another Test opener, Andrew Hilditch.
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