Tributes pour in for John Hampshire

Hampshire played international cricket for England before he turned to umpiring

Former England cricketer and international umpire, John Hampshire passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by his family after a long illness at the age of 76. A member of the Yorkshire side in the 1960s, Hampshire won five County Championship titles and also played for England in eight Tests and three ODIs.

He made his first-class debut in 1961 and scored over 28,000 first-class runs, including 45 hundreds. He even scored a century on Test debut against West Indies at Lord’s in 1969 but only played seven more Tests after that.

At the conclusion of his playing career, he became a first-class umpire and stood in his first Test in 1989. He won plenty of admirers over the next decade as an international umpire, which came to an end in 2002 after being an umpire in 41 international matches.

Upon retiring from being an umpire, Hampshire turned to his county, Yorkshire, for whom he took over as club president in March 2016, after previously playing and captaining the county.

Here are the tributes from the cricket fraternity:

Joe Root:

Anil Kumble:

Sachin Tendulkar:

Michael Vaughan:

Harbhajan Singh:

Graeme Swann:

David Lloyd:

Ian Botham:

Jonny Bairstow:

Former Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie: