Donald Carr

Donald Bryce Carr OBE (28 December 1926 – 12 June 2016) was an English cricketer who played for Derbyshire from 1946 to 1967, for Oxford University from 1948 to 1951, and twice for England in 1951/52. He captained Derbyshire between 1955 and 1962 and scored over 10,000 runs for the county.

His cricket administration roles included twelve years as assistant secretary to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), taking over as secretary of the fledgling Test and County Cricket Board in 1976. In his ten years in that role, cricket writer, Colin Bateman noted that Carr "mixed diplomacy with a sense of justice as first the Packer Affair, and then the first rebel tour to South Africa, threatened to split the world game". He went to Forres Boarding School in Swanage (the headmaster, R. M. Chadwick, a former opening bat for Dorset Minor Counties 1st XI, coached him) and then to Repton School, where his father had taken the post of bursar. Already an above average boy cricketer, he developed into one of the best young all-rounders under the coaching of Lionel Blaxland and Garnet Lee. In 1944 his last year at Repton, he captained The Rest against the Lord's Schools and the Public Schools' side against a Lord's XI.

Carr joined the Army on 1 January 1945, and was sent to Northern Ireland, where he had little scope to play serious cricket. In the summer he went to Wrotham for a training course and was chosen, on the withdrawal of George Pope, for England in the third Victory Test match against the Australian Services XI at Lord's.

Carr scored 2,092 runs at an average of more than 44 runs an innings in the 1959 season, and was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1960.

Carr played 745 innings on 446 first-class matches, with an average of 28.61 and a top score of 170. He took 328 first-class wickets at an average of 34.74, and a best performance of 7 for 53.

Carr represented Oxford University at football, and played in the FA Amateur Cup final twice for the winning Pegasus side in 1951 and 1953.

Carr later became an ICC match referee. After his retirement, he became assistant secretary of the MCC from 1963 to 1976, and then secretary to the Cricket Council and the Test and County Cricket Board – both forerunners of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) – for ten years after that. He also managed several MCC tours in the 1960s and 1970s.

Carr's son John played for Middlesex.