Bob Woolmer

Robert Andrew Woolmer, cricketer and coach: born Kanpur, India 14 May 1948; married 1974 Gillian Hall (two sons); died Kingston, Jamaica 18 March 2007.

Bob Woolmer was one of world cricket's most innovative and intelligent coaches, a man who would have been listed as a candidate to manage England had Duncan Fletcher resigned or been dismissed from his post later this year. The Pakistan coach and former England batsman had won an international reputation with his successes with Warwickshire and South Africa and, although he had had patchy advances with the mercurial and fractious Pakistanis, he would have had no illusions as to what that proud country's sensational World Cup defeat by Ireland on Saturday would have meant back in Karachi and Lahore. There had been reports of Woolmer's effigy being burned in the streets.

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He died on Sunday in Kingston, Jamaica, after being found unconscious in his hotel room.

Woolmer had mentioned his weariness to friends. Dickie Bird, the former umpire, recalled: "Bob had told me of how tired he was of the continual travelling but he was still very keen on his job." Nearing 60, he might have been looking to double up with a county post in England and a provincial attachment near his South Africa home. The increasing pressures brought on by the non-stop international cricket programme proved too much.

Bob Woolmer was born into cricket. The son of a first class batsman, an English businessman in India, he was lucky enough to have been taken by his father to watch Hanif Mohammed make a world record individual score of 499 in Karachi and was then Warwickshire's coach when he saw Brian Lara surpass that with 501 not out for the county against Durham in 1994.

The Woolmer family returned from India to Kent, where Woolmer, after school in Tunbridge Wells, emerged in the county team of 1968 as a right-handed batsman whose stylish stroke play evoked comparisons with Colin Cowdrey and who could also bowl a useful medium pace. Kent capped him, an all-rounder, in 1970 but it was not until five years later, when he moved up to opener, that his career took off.

Chosen for the first of his 19 Tests in 1975, he won renown in his second by defying Australia, including Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, for six and a half hours to reach 149. The following year, when he scored 1,749 runs at an average of 47, he was named one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year.

Woolmer was less successful against West Indies and India but reclaimed public favour in 1977 with two more centuries against Australia. That series presaged Kerry Packer's launch of the rebel World Series and Woolmer virtually scuppered his England career by first signing for Packer and then joining a rebel tour to South Africa, where he had had previously played for Natal, in 1973-76.

Still later he was to start in his coaching career there, in multi-racial cricket. He was always prepared to challenge the perceived wisdom of the day and his first book, in 1984, was entitled Pirate and Rebel - although most who knew him well thought of him as a gentle man.

A back injury ended his playing career in 1984 at 36 but after three years in South Africa he re-appeared as Kent's coach in 1987 and joined Warwickshire four years later, where his original methods brought success and attention. As a batsman he had been impressed, in the assessment of opposing players' weaknesses by the Middlesex and England captain Mike Brearley, by the detail. The advent of advanced technology, especially video-recording, meant that such reports could be turned into film, shown repeatedly until absorbed by his team.

Woolmer was also renowned for his ability to turn the often boring routines of physical fitness training and fielding practice into entertaining sessions hugely enjoyed by the players. "You looked forward to Bob's training and warm-ups" was one comment.

After Edgbaston (1919-94) a national post was the next step and soon we were reading of "Bob Woolmer's South Africa", until 1999. He made a brief return to Warwickshire, becoming in 2002 the International Cricket Council's High Performance Manager, and it came as a surprise to hear he had joined Pakistan on a three-year contract in 2004. It was a stormy passage (there were allegations of match-fixing), before Pakistan lost a Test match by default to England at the Oval following a ball-tampering report. His two leading fast bowlers were suspended after drug tests and then ruled out of the World Cup reportedly unfit. Woolmer, as ever, had been optimistic and declared he would not quit of his own accord until Pakistan won the cup but it was recognised that this genial and amiable man was under sustained pressure.

His legacy will be the standards he set for young coaches to follow and somewhere, be it Edgbaston, Canterbury or Durban, there should be a Woolmer Lecture Hall in his memory.

In his first class career, mostly for Kent and Natal, he scored 15,772 runs at an average of 33.55, including a 203 for Kent against Sussex. He took 420 wickets at an average of 27.85.

Derek Hodgson