They call it “catching swallows”, the ability to see bat from the edge of a cricket a rocket of five and a half-ounce, often driven with 90 miles per hour, and then, a fraction of a second later-slight a few meters away and with bald hands-picking it from the air.
It requires the reactions of a Formula 1 director, the eyes of a hawk, the concentration of a chess grandmaster and a perfect capture technique. From it comes a mental image of a supreme field player who dives from his habit of taking another stunner for Australia. In the history of the international cricket there has been no spectacular more efficient slippery more than Bob Simpson, who died at the age of 89. In 62 test competitions for Australia between 1957 and 1978, he took 110 catches, a success rate of 0.94 per capture, not just for his country, but somewhere before or since then.
It was his amazing catch that defined him as a cricket player, but he was also a gifted all -rounder. He was the most consistent productive of all Australian opening partners, with Bill Lawry; He was the first player since Don Bradman who made a triple century before his country, that he managed against England in 1964; And he took five wickets twice in an innings with his legbreaks and Googlies. In all tests he made 4,869 runs on an average of 46.81, with 10 centuries, and took 71 wickets at 42.26 each.
Other Australian combinations have delivered more aggregated runs than Simpson and Lawry, and there have certainly been those considerably more spectacular than that sloppy efficient pair. Their alliance caused an average of 60.95 runs over the 62 times that they went to the Wicket together. Earlier in the history of the game, the partnerships in England between Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe were on average an amazing 87.81, and those between Hobbs and Wilfred Rhodes 61.31.
For a period of more than four decades, however, Simpson’s contribution to the Australian cricket was versatile. He was Australia captain in 39 tests, including a spell of 10 games in the mid -1970s when he, 41 years old, retired to lead the team during the interruption caused by Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. He became the first full-time coach of Australia and transformed, through hard work and iron discipline, a RAG-Bag side in the best team in the world. He also worked in the media as a columnist and commentator, and as a commissioner at the International Cricket Council.
Simpson was born in Sydney, from Scottish immigrant parents, Sarah (no 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 in golf, tennis, baseball, pumpkin and football during his school days at Tempe High School.
In the 1952-53 season, while still shy his 17th birthday for more than fourteen days, he made his first class debut, for New South Wales against Victoria, the second youngest player ever selected for the state. Limited chance meant it took two years until he scored his first-class century, 104 against Victoria, as a batsman from the middle order, and he spent four seasons of 1956-57 with Western Australia. He toured Australia with Australia in 1957 and then the next winter in South Africa, making his test debut in the first test in Johannesburg.
His early test career, however, was not convincing and it was the great Australian left -handed Neil Harvey who advised him to try to open the batting. It coincided with a modified technique to handle the fast short delivery.
It was in the fourth test in Old Trafford in 1961 that he started his partnership with Lawry – the land on which, three years later, and by that time Australia Captain, he would register his first test and the transformation of a modest Batsman to a very nice started to start. At this point, Simpson had reached his 30th test and his career average was on a modest 35.93.
But now he marked it by beating more than 13 hours, longer than any Australian could have been managed in first-class cricket, to make an undefeated 311 innings that the spectators barely satisfied (the competition, in which each side hit the other in oblivion was one of the boring of all draws), but who had retained the ashes. It transformed him: for the second half of his career he was an average of 50.89.
Towards the end of the 1967-68 season, after a home series against India, Simpson had decided to retire to pursue a career in journalism and public relations. With the arrival of World Series Cricket in 1977, however, he was persuaded to return and led Australia again – a team without all his stars with the exception of Jeff Thomson – first at home in India, where he made centuries in the first and fifth tests, and then in the Caribbean, a more eager proposition. Towards the end of 1978, the Australian administration had replaced him by Graham Yallop.
In 1986, with the national team in some disorder, after he won 14 games without a victory in the previous three years, the Australian cricket board turned to Simpson again as their first head coach, with Allan border as captain. As a coach, Simpson was essentially a traditionalist who focused on the fundamental batting, bowling and field aspects of the game instead of the trend to computer analysis and biomechanics.
Hij nam een jonge kant over, en door hetzelfde ethos van sterke discipline en hard werken dat zijn eigen carrière in stand hield, transformeerde hij hen het volgende decennium in een formidabel team en won de Wereldbeker 1987 in India-iets dat een katalysator bewees voor toekomstig succes-het herwinnen van de as in Engeland in 1989 in 1989, en, met de West India die hun eerste serie ledte in 15 jaar in 1994-95, Now the finest side in the fine side in the world.
He left his Australian role in 1996 and acted as a consultant of India, coached the Netherlands and then Lancashire (2000-2001), after he had previously coached Leicestershire County Championship.
His last inheritance, and an important one, will be his contribution to the ICC committee established in 2001 to combat the increase in illegal bowling actions. In 2004 he was very critical of the ICC, with the argument that it was soft; When continuing to punish dubious actions, he said, the lake of them through imitation. A decade later, and his president finally bore fruit.
Simpson was named Cricketer of the Year in 1965. He was recorded in 1985 in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2006 and the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2013. He became a member of the Order of Australia in 1978, promoted to officer in 2007. He received an Australian sports medal in 2000 and a central medal in 2001.
In 1958 he married Meg McCarthy, and they had two daughters, Kim and Debbie.
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