Simon Hughes was born on 20 December 1959 in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey. He went to Durham University where he obtained a degree in geography.
He was a right-arm, fast-medium bowler who represented Middlesex, Durham and Northern Transvaal over a 14 year career which lasted from 1980 to 1993.
He played 205 first-class matches and 202 List A ones. He took 466 first-class wickets and claimed 5 wickets in an innings ten times with a best of 7/35. He also took 272 List A wickets, claiming 4 wickets six times with a best of 5/23. He made one first class fifty – 53.
Simon played for Middlesex during a golden era. In 1980, his first season, his county won both the County Championship and the Gillette Cup. Simon was the top wicket taker in that Gillette cup final at Lord’s on the 06 September 1980 – taking 3/60 of 11 overs. His scalps were Graham Roope, Monte Lynch and David Thomas. Middlesex beat their old rivals, Surrey, by 7 wickets. Middlesex also won the County Championship in 1982, 1985 and 1990. Additionally, the NatWest Trophy was won in 1984 and 1988. The Benson & Hedges Cup was won in 1983 and 1986.
Simon became a successful cricket author writing several well-received books. He wrote two excellent books about his own cricketing experiences – one was about his life, the ups and the downs, as a professional cricketer (“A Lot of Hard Yakka”) and the other was about his experiences, told in a most amusing manner, as an overseas professional cricketer in several Test playing countries (“Yakking Around the World”). Please note that yakka and yakking are the Aboriginal words for work and working. The former title was the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1997.
Post his playing career, Simon has worked in the media. He is well-known to cricket fans as the Analyst for Chanel 4’s Test match coverage from 1999 to 2005. He later worked on Cricket on 5 (2006 to 2010). He gave the viewer an insight into some of the more technical aspects of the play. He often uses Hawkeye to illustrate his observations. He has also written for the “Daily Telegraph”, “The Independent” and “The Times”. He edited “The Cricketer” from 2014 to 2021.
Simon runs a podcast, with Simon Mann, called “The Analyst Inside Cricket”.
Ken Burney – June 2024