When a cricket captain ‘kidnapped’ an umpire!

The antics of a Derbyshire cricketer threatened the relationship between two nations, as John Stone reports.

DONALD CARR played cricket for Derbyshire with great distinction between 1946 and 1962, serving the county admirably as captain from the 1955 season onwards.  Though he was a superb player, Carr’s career was seriously blighted by an incident in 1956 which, though intended as no more than a humorous prank, sparked off a potentially disastrous breakdown in relations between England and Pakistan.  The infamous ‘umpire kidnapping’ episode is all the more perplexing when set against Carr’s hard-won reputation as a safe pair of hands initially as a cricketer and later as an administrator of the game…