Famous Cricketers No 50 - Reg Simpson

with MCC and batted well enough in the early games to be chosen on merit for the First Test at Durban. He failed in the match, being dismissed by Mann and McCarthy for 5 and 0, and it cost him his Test place as Jack Crapp replaced him for the rest of the series. Returning to England, Simpson set about regaining his Test place. In his early career with Notts he found that the County possessed an established opening pair in Walter Keeton and Charlie Harris but in 1949 Simpson was promoted to open the innings with Keeton. The move proved such a success that he scored 1906 Championship runs at an average of 68.07 and shared with Keeton in opening stands of more than a hundred in four successive games including a partnership of 318 against Lancashire at Old Trafford which was the second highest opening stand in the County’s history. Recalled to the England side against New Zealand in the Third Test at Old Trafford he made his first Test century, 103, going from 50 to 103 in just twenty-seven minutes. He hit three sixes and eleven fours. In the Fourth Test at Kennington Oval he scored 68. His performances in 1949 led to him being chosen as one of Wisden ‘s ‘Five Cricketers of the Year’ in the 1950 Annual.He played in three Tests the following season against West Indies sharing a partnership of 212 with Cyril Washbrook in a losing cause at Trent Bridge. Simpson’s score was 94 (run out). He made 1873 Championship runs in 1950 and must have been one of the first names selected to go to Australia with MCC in the winter of 1950/51. In Australia, batting in an unbalanced and somewhat immature side, Simpson’s performances were patchy. He did make the highest score of his career, 259, against New South Wales at Sydney, but for a long time he struggled in the Tests although he was by no means the only one to do so. Opening at Brisbane in the First Test he made twelve and nought, excusable on a sticky wicket, and at Melbourne in the Second Test, opening again he made 4 and 23. Reverting to first wicket down he hit 49, 0, 29 and 61 in the next two Tests. In the final Test at Melbourne his hour at last arrived. His innings of 156 not out was probably the finest of his life and it set up England’s first victory over Australia since the war. After this effort it would have been thought that Simpson would be a fixture in the England side for years, especially as good opening batsmen were not abundantly available in England in the mid 1950’s. Middle order batsmen like Graveney, Cowdrey and even Trevor Bailey opened for England between 1955 and 1957 whilst Simpson was ignored. In fact the 1950/51 series in Australia was the only five Test series when he played in every match. He played three Tests against South Africa in 1951, two against India in 1952 and three each against Australia and Pakistan in 1953 and 1954. Overseas he played one Test in Australia in 1954/55 and two in New Zealand on the same tour. He also played in representative matches for a Commonwealth XI against an Indian XI in the winter of 1953/54. Overall he played in twenty-seven Test Matches scoring 1401 runs at an average of 33.35. Perhaps he deserved to play in more. He made two more Test hundreds - 137 against South Africa in 1951 and 101 against Pakistan in 1954, both at Trent Bridge. The first of these hundreds was the first occasion on which a Nottinghamshire batsman had scored a Test century at Trent Bridge. In 1956 when Simpson was chosen to captain MCC against the touring Australians there was some speculation in the Press that he was under consideration for the England captaincy. The incumbent, Peter May, was out of form with the bat at the time. But, in that summer of successful recalls - Washbrook, Sheppard and Compton, Simpson’s name continued to be ignored. Simpson continued to play County cricket for Nottinghamshire until 1963, although after 1960 he restricted his appearances mainly to home matches. He captained the County from 1951 to 1960. As a captain he played the game in the old amateur tradition and could not understand the negative tactics sometimes employed by other teams. At Trent Bridge, in 1951, he became so incensed by the slow progress of a Glamorgan innings that he put himself on after tea to bowl an over of underarms. His chief problem in these years was the lack of bite in the Nottinghamshire attack apart from some magical performances by Bruce Dooland between 1953 and 1957. 4