by Arunabha Sengupta
A top-class athlete and footballer, he strangely achieved fame as a lob bowler.
An adventurer who revelled in climbing and camping in the Himalayas and trekking across dangerous passes, he also liked to knit woollen scarves during long sea voyages.
A man who spent hours on tours making notes on strange plants and collecting seeds in pill boxes, he also tossed billiards balls in his hands and thereby discovered an underhand spinning technique that went on to evolve as the flipper.
Yes, he was full of curious contradictions.
A football fullback named GH Simpson in his Malvern days, it was in this sport that he attained his Blue at Cambridge and toured South Africa with the Corinthians. His second tour to that country was as GHT Simpson-Hayward the cricketer, the double-barrelled last name as intriguing as the proficiency of his in bowling lobs at a rather remarkable pace. That too, in an era when lobsters had become nearly obsolete.
In the process of tweaking and tossing billiard balls, he discovered a curious technique. He tried it out ‘in the privacy of his garden and against players of the local village side.’
During the course of Ten Thousand Miles of Cricket through India and Burma for the Oxford Authentics in 1902-03, Simpson-Hayward captured 102 wickets at 11.01. However, only three of the matches were deemed first-class.
In one of the other miscellaneous encounters, against the Aligarh Muslim University Past and Present, he captured 7 for 34 including three off successive balls. The final victim of his hat-trick presented him with a fez.
When he sailed to New Zealand with MCC in 1906-07, he became the organist while Johnny Douglas assumed the role of his monkey during the fancy dress party on the Corinthic. By then he could spin his off-breaks viciously. In fact, he had several different off-breaks, bowled fuller than any previous lobster and many at far greater pace. He captured 67 wickets in all, at 12.30. In first-class matches, 35 at 16.38.
A 15-year-old Clarrie Grimmett was fascinated. He started copying his methods—with tennis balls and overarm. That was how the flipper was born.
When Simpson-Hayward visited South Africa in 1909-10, he topped the English bowling averages with 23 wickets from 5 Tests at 18.26. Vogler, Faulkner, Schwarz and White, all the four googly bowlers were there on their native matting. But Simpson-Hayward used the same matting to spin the ball by extraordinary degrees. South Africa won 3-2. Of the two English victories, one was engineered by the great Colin Blythe, the other by Simpson-Hayward. The only notable Test success in the history of underarm bowling.
A tally of 503 first-class wickets at 21.39. The Tests in South Africa were the only ones he played, and hence his record is an impressive 23 wickets from 5 Tests at 18.26. He also scored fast and hit hard down the order, slamming three first-class hundreds and scoring over 5000 first-class runs at 18.58.
He was one of a kind.
GHT Simpson-Hayward was born on 7 June 1875.
He loved to knit.
