The cricketer Donald Carr, who has died aged 89, was one of the last distinguished amateurs in the first-class game, making his name as captain of Derbyshire in the 1950s and 60s, and playing briefly for England, whom he also skippered. His primary impact, though, was as a senior cricket administrator, first as assistant secretary of MCC from 1962 until 1974 and then as secretary of the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) until his retirement in 1986.
Carr served at a time when England was still at the centre of the international game, and his tenure in those posts encompassed a tumultuous era of change that included the introduction of one-day cricket, the D’Oliveira and Packer affairs, the creation of the World Cup, and rebel tours to South Africa.
Perhaps the most troubling of those events was MCC’s announcement in 1968 that it had not selected the black cricketer Basil D’Oliveira to play for England on the 1968-69 tour to South Africa, a move that was widely seen as a reprehensible appeasement of apartheid. Carr, who afterwards disliked talking about what had clearly been a painful episode for him, was one of 10 key figures who took part in the meetings that decided to exclude D’Oliveira. Many years later he conceded: “I think I believed, or was talked into believing, that it was all on cricketing grounds.” He also admitted that even after the decision was reversed, “it all looked so awful”.
As TCCB secretary in the late 1970s, when Kerry Packer began World Series cricket as a rival to the established game, Carr tried to ban players who had signed up for the new venture, only to have the decision overturned in the courts. He also unsuccessfully attempted to prevent Ian Botham from writing a column for the Sun newspaper in 1983, while Botham was still an England player. Carr was almost inevitably viewed as a conservative establishment figure, but he brought valuable diplomatic skills to his work and maintained his reputation for tact and charm even when the decisions he was charged with enacting did not meet with universal acclaim. Although he was a confirmed amateur, one of his most important achievements was to help move cricket into the modern, professional era.
Born in Wiesbaden in Germany, to John, an army officer, and his wife Constance, Carr was brought up from the age of five in the New Forest, Hampshire, and then attended Repton school in Derbyshire, where his father had become bursar after leaving the army. The young Carr made big waves in private school cricket and, aged only 18, was selected to play in the third unofficial “Victory Test” for England against an Australian Services XI at Lord’s in 1945 – his first-class debut, in which he made only five runs. By then he had enlisted in the army, and he later began training at Sandhurst, playing cricket both for the Combined Services and, when he was available, as an amateur for Derbyshire.
After missing the 1947 season in Burma with his regiment, Carr left the army in 1948 for Oxford University, where he was made captain of the cricket team in 1950. A stylish, cheerful right-handed batsman and excellent close fielder, he was also a rather unpredictable left arm wrist spinner. While at Oxford he continued to play when he could for Derbyshire, and when he left university he committed himself fully to the county, although as an amateur he also took on a job at a local brewery. He headed Derbyshire’s batting averages in 1951, and the England selectors – still wedded to the idea of amateur leadership at international level – appointed Carr vice-captain of England’s 1951-52 tour to India, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
He made his debut for England in the middle order against India in Delhi in November 1951, saving the match with an obdurate second innings stand of 158 with Glamorgan’s Allan Watkins, in which he scored 76. Nonetheless he was dropped for the following Test, and made his only other appearance for England when the captain, Nigel Howard – another amateur – contracted pleurisy. Despite his inexperience, Carr was called in to lead the side in the fifth Test at Madras (now Chennai) in February 1952, and presided over England’s first ever Test defeat to India. It was his last cap for his country, and shortly afterwards Len Hutton became the first professional to captain England in a 20th-century Test match.
Carr returned to his county, and in 1953 took on the (paid) job of being Derbyshire’s assistant secretary in addition to his playing duties. Appointed captain in 1955, he had a superb season with the bat in 1959, scoring 2,165 runs for the county – still a Derbyshire record – and was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1960, when he was also promoted to club secretary.
Having scored close to 20,000 runs at an average of 28.61 and claimed 328 wickets during his career, Carr ended his first-class playing days in 1963, by which time he had already become assistant secretary at MCC. The divisions between gentlemen and players were abolished in the year he joined MCC, and thereafter the game changed out of all recognition. As part of his duties at MCC he was a successful manager of England tours to South Africa (1964‑65), India and Pakistan (1972-73) and the West Indies (1973-74). Having been made OBE in 1985 for services to cricket, in retirement he served as an international match referee in nine Tests and 19 one-day matches between 1991 and 1994 .
He is survived by his wife, Stella (nee Simpkinson), whom he married in 1953, by a son, John, who played first class cricket for Middlesex, and by a daughter, Diana.
• Donald Bryce Carr, cricketer, born 28 December 1926; died 11 June 2016
