In the third week of April this year, English cricket lost two of its former test players, both stalwarts in their own way. The left-arm spinner Derek ‘Deadly’ Underwood (86 Tests between 1966-1982) and the left-handed opener Raman Subba Row (13 Tests between 1958-1961). They passed away within days of each other, leaving a legacy in their on- and off-field services to the game.
Underwood has been a legend in Kent and in England. Vic Marks writes this of him: “On true surfaces you wondered where the next run was coming from when facing Underwood; in drying pitches in the age of uncovered wickets, you knew your days were numbered. Down fizzed the ball, which might bounce and turn and it was only a matter of time before the inevitable. The amiable Alan Knott was behind the stumps (a key ally in many of the spinner’s wickets) and he smiled knowingly since he knew it was only a matter of time as well”.
Underwood was so accurate that he could land the ball repeatedly on the same spot. The spinner’s metronomic control of line, length, and pace meant that he was not an easy prospect on any surface. However, he was particularly devastating on wet wickets, or pitches that had a fair bit of moisture, thereby earning the moniker ‘Deadly’. His speed, bordering on medium-pace, meant that any grip in the surface because of the dampness could be exploited to the fullest. The batter had little time to adjust to the turn that Underwood extracted. Moisture also helped him get some swing or drift on the ball, making it even harder to line-up the ball’s trajectory.
All of these characteristics were on display during his match-winning 7 for 50 in the 1968 Oval Ashes Test, where Underwood converted a near certain draw into a victory on the last day with 4 wickets off 27 balls and a bare 6 minutes remaining for end of play. He exploited to the full a pitch that had seen a lot of rain.
Underwood’s prowess on wet wickets is often used to undermine him, but there aren’t many who could do what he did on a damp pitch and certainly not with the same frequency. Though his captains considered him their greatest asset on wet pitches, Underwood also had the tactical nous to adjust his pace and length for better batting surfaces. You do not make an 86-test career with 297 test wickets by only being useful in conditions helpful to you.
Underwood could have played many more but for two decisions that he chose to make. In 1978, at the peak of his powers, he joined Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC). Then, in 1981, he went on a rebel tour to South Africa, when the country’s apartheid policies had led to its exclusion from international cricket, resulting in a three-year ban for him.
In a moving tribute to the spinner, the former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell writes that Underwood’s “defiant decisions were a mark of his single-mindedness, but also of his belief that a professional cricketer should be paid his worth”.
One might rightly critique Underwood’s decision to tour South Africa, but his support for WSC was perhaps not pure mercenariness. Simon Wilde notes in his history of English Cricket that Underwood was the only player who agreed to play an extra test match for England without any additional fee in what became the first ever One Day International on the 1975 tour to Australia. So, he may have viewed Packer’s tournament more as a means to buttress the otherwise uncertain futures of players than as simply a road to make a quick buck.
His decisions cost him many things. He forewent a likely higher statistical status in English Cricket’s rich history. Underwood ‘only’ played 86 tests and picked up 297 wickets at close to 26 runs apiece. He still has the most test wickets for an English spinner and sits at sixth among all of the country’s wicket-takers. Had he not moved away from the national game when he could have gone on much longer, he might, at the very least, have ended above Ian Botham’s 383 (third on the list).
Underwood’s stubborn resilience though, has impacted the game more fundamentally than his numbers. Every cricketer today – making millions in T20 leagues played over 2-3 months – owes it to Underwood and others who were willing to risk their careers for what they felt was their true worth.
Underwood’s later brushes with cricket came in an administrative and pastoral capacity. In 1997 he became the patron of the Primary Club, a charity which provides sporting facilities for the visually impaired, and in 2008, he was appointed as the president of the Marylebone Cricket Club. He sought to find the ways to make the game more accessible to and sustainable for everyone.
Raman Subba Row, the other southpaw cricket lost recently, was born to an Indian father, Panguluri Subba Rao (an Indian Barrister from Bapatla in Andhra Pradesh), and an English mother, Doris Mildred Pinner and brought up in Britain. He was educated at Cambridge, where he also played for a strong University team, before representing Surrey, Northamptonshire and eventually England.
Though not the most fluent batter, he played with grit, determination, and concentration. In 1961, in his last test match, he scored a match-saving century against Australia at the Oval, batting for over six hours. An antipodean match victory seemed all but assured at the end of the fourth day. While the Daily Mail acknowledged that England were ‘going down fighting’, they also believed that ‘there is not the slightest hope of saving the game in a full day’s play’. Yet England managed to draw the game. England still lost the Ashes series, but Subba Row’s 137 made the score line of defeat (2-1) a more respectable one.
The magnitude of his commitment can be summed up in the Daily Mail’s headline ‘IT’S ‘NO-SURRENDER’ SUBBA’ and their excellent articulation of his grit: “Subba Row, who quits first-class cricket at the end of the season, is making a brave farewell to Test matches. Brave because for most of yesterday he suffered from a painful groin strain and needed [Ted] Dexter as a runner. Brave because he defied the full range of Australia’s attack for the three hours the rains allowed and is still there with 69. While he could never match the fire of Australia’s [Norm] O’Neill or [Peter] Burge, he at least steered England through two spells when Benaud appeared set to break through”.
Astonishingly, Subba Row’s defiant final innings came at the age of 29. Knowing that cricket would not give him financial stability, as it rarely did in those days, he chose to pursue a successful career in public relations.
When he retired, Subba Row averaged a very solid 46.85 in Tests, with 3 centuries (two against Australia and one against the West Indies – no mean feat). Like Underwood, his playing career could have been more than it was. Also like Underwood, his contributions to cricket extended beyond the pitch.
In the 1980s Subba Row came back to cricket as an administrator, setting up the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) – the precursor to the English Cricket Board (ECB) – that helped move power away from the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) to the International Cricket Council (ICC), democratising the game.
As chairman of the TCCB, Subba Row was staunchly in favour of apartheid South Africa’s exclusion from world cricket. In A History of Indian Cricket, Mihir Bose refers to this in relation to a 1988 England tour of India that was cancelled as it featured many English players on the United Nations Blacklist for going on the same rebel tour to South Africa on which Underwood went. India did not wish to welcome these players.
Bose writes that as the chairman of the TCCB, “Raman Subba Row was sufficiently incensed” by the selection committee and considered “calling a meeting to sack the selectors”. While this sacking did not go ahead, it still shows Subba Row’s commitment to what he considered a just cause and his willingness to speak up for it. Soon after the tour’s cancellation, the global administrators took stock and eventually any player touring South Africa faced a ban.
As different as they were, for neither Underwood nor Subba Row did the shortened careers mean a lack of skill or care for the game. Their off-field actions reaffirm that the game of cricket is more than just about winning or statistics. It is about fostering communities that make the game sustainable for everyone playing, and often, for publicly upholding ethical principles.
What cricket has lost with the passing of these two greats is more than just skillful players. It is their forthright and forward-thinking personalities that will be missed the most.
Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal is an associate lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews.
