Bob Woolmer was the best coach England never had. He should probably have got the job back in 1994 when he joined South Africa following his record-breaking treble season at Warwickshire. Instead, England were in the last throws of amateurism with Ray Illingworth combining the roles of coach (or manager, as he preferred to call it) and chairman of selectors, and they had not the wherewithal to see the gift-horse, let alone the mouth.

Then, in 1999, he was ready to leave South Africa and in the frame to succeed David Lloyd, only to be pipped at the post by Duncan Fletcher.

Aged 58 when he died, he was probably too old to have taken over from Fletcher now — he had indicated that he was ready to return to Cape Town to run his own academy — but only last year he confided that he had been asked by the England and Wales Cricket Board whether he would be interested in following Fletcher.

The England job was one he would dearly have liked at some stage, partly out of loyalty to the country he represented and partly out of vanity. He would never have publicly stated as much, but he would have considered himself the equal of any coach in the world, and reasonably so.

He reckoned Fletcher, for example, was short of cricketing know-how — and would recite the disparity in first-class appearances, 350 for Woolmer compared to Fletcher’s 111 — and there are plenty of county chairmen round the country who would have agreed with him.

Had he lived, he could still have commanded an interview as the next England coach, if only because international coaching remains a highly specialised role which few have mastered anything like as well as he had.

Team coaching in cricket is still in its infancy. It barely dates back 20 years and perhaps only Bob Simpson, Dav Whatmore, John Buchanan, John Wright, Tom Moody and Fletcher can be ranked with Woolmer as those who have done it well in more than one environment. They have been true to their craft over sustained periods, as opposed to those who have seen coaching as merely a stopping-off post on the way to the commentary box.

The best coaches see teaching as more important than results, and that was certainly true of Woolmer. He often produced the results for Warwickshire, South Africa and Pakistan, but knew that the game was far more complicated than that. Coaches, like captains, take thousands of small decisions and they can’t hope to get them all right. A lot of things — results especially — are largely out of their control, but what is not out of their control is passing on sound advice, and he was very good at that.

In this sense, Pakistan was an odd place for Woolmer to go because in Pakistan far too much is read into results. Captains, coaches, selection panels and board chairmen routinely lose their jobs when results do not go Pakistan’s way; indeed, all these posts need filling in Pakistan’s one-day set-up as a result of the team’s pathetic efforts at the World Cup. Equally, Woolmer’s love of innovation was not always welcomed in Pakistan, where territories are jealously guarded. They will never improve until they take a more mature view of things.

Woolmer’s first loyalty was to the game. When England toured Pakistan in 2005, he could not help himself passing on a piece of advice to Ian Bell, an old charge from his Warwickshire days, when he detected a slight technical glitch in his batting grip. Woolmer said he would not have done it had Bell been expected to play in the Tests; as it was, Bell was set to be left out. However, an injury to Michael Vaughan won Bell a reprieve and he finished the series as England’s leading scorer.

Woolmer was essentially a nonconfrontational man. He sought to cajole, not dragoon. During that 2005 tour, I went to see him in his modest apartment at Pakistan’s new national academy adjacent to the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore. Only a Westerner truly in love with cricket would have lived in such spartan conditions, which consisted of one room, with a bed, sofas, a tel-evision and a small bathroom. But it was all he needed.

Shoaib Akhtar had just won Pakistan a Test series over England, yet Woolmer’s praise remained qualified for a cricketer whose commitment and methods were questionable. He was right to be cautious, as Shoaib has done little to enhance his reputation since then. Only recently, Shoaib was fined by his board for publicly arguing with Woolmer during a tour of South Africa; claims in the Pakistan media that Woolmer had racially abused Shoaib were ludicrous but sadly typical.

Woolmer was unhappy, too, at the politicking that determined so much in Pakistan cricket. He knew even then that he would not stay beyond the World Cup. “I’ll write all about it in a book after this is over,” he vowed. But it sounded more like an excuse for postponing confrontation than a genuine threat.

When I had dinner with him in Manchester last summer, he gave some fascinating insights into the bewildering nature of working with Pakistan players, whom he described as extraordinarily childlike.

He recalled how, at his first net practice, Inzamam-ul-Haq, the captain, had wanted to stop the session once the main batsmen had had their turn. Inzamam did not consider it worth the rest of the squad having a bat. Woolmer soon changed that. He also related how Abdul Razzaq, who had been touring the world for 10 years, was genuinely convinced that a back injury had been caused by witchcraft. He dealt with all these challenges with remarkable equanimity, largely because there was nothing under the sun he had not seen before; or at least he hadn’t until last weekend.

As player and coach he must have had direct contact with more cricketers than anyone else in the game today. The number of those now mourning his death is therefore vast.

The life and times of Bob Woolmer

The player

— Born in India, he made his mark with Kent in the 1970s

— He played 19 Tests for England, recording a best score of 149 and averaging 33.09

— In only his second Test, he saved England against Australia by holding out for 499 minutes against Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, scoring 149

— Signed for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977 and joined the rebel South African tour of 1982

The coach

— His coaching career began at Warwickshire, whom he transformed in the early 1990s. In 1994, the county lost only four matches in all four competitions, winning three trophies

— In 1994 he was appointed coach of South Africa

— Woolmer quit after the 1999 World Cup and, following a second, unsuccessful spell at Warwickshire and a stint as the ICC’s high performance manager, was appointed Pakistan’s coach in 2004

— His contract was due to expire in June. He found life in charge of Pakistan frustrating and often accused his players of indiscipline

— Pakistan were eliminated from the 2007 World Cup. The next day Woolmer was found unconscious in his hotel room and he died that afternoon

Explore Cricket

• Counties