Raman Subba Row died on April 17, 2024, aged 92. He played 13 Test matches for England between 1958 and 1961, and later became an ICC match referee. He was remembered in the 2025 edition of the Wisden Almanack.
SUBBA ROW, RAMAN, CBE, who died on April 17, aged 92, had a relatively brief but very eventful career for Surrey, Northamptonshire and England. But his most lasting mark on the game came much later, as one of the most forceful and innovative of administrators.
Raman was born in London. His father, an Indian lawyer who was practising there, married an Englishwoman, and anglicised his name from Subba Rao. The son’s talent for cricket was soon clear, and he blossomed at Whitgift School, first as a left-hander-cum-off-spinner, before switching to leg-breaks. When he barged his way into the First XI in his freshers’ year at Cambridge, his leg-spin immediately caused problems, taking 5-21 in a losing cause in the 1951 Varsity Match. But steadily the batting took over: in 1953, he scored 937 runs for Cambridge alone, before being picked for Surrey and taking his season’s total to 1,823 at an average of 50.
The next year was an anticlimax and, with Surrey at the height of their dominance, he contemplated a career in business, before opting to go to Northamptonshire – then very much on the up – with an offer of accountancy training from a local firm, and a nod and a wink about future captaincy. Arriving in 1955, he was an instant success, scoring a marathon 260 not out against Lancashire, then the county’s highest score. Belatedly, there were two years’ national service in the RAF, and Subba Row waved au revoir to Wantage Road, knowing he had been offered the captaincy for 1958. When the time came, the season after the much-respected Dennis Brookes had led Northamptonshire to second place behind Surrey, Subba Row had to remind them of the promise. Otherwise, once again, he was willing to give up the game. He was an amateur, as was traditional for Oxbridge men, but even they had to make a living.
Brookes never uttered a word about being displaced, but some of his senior players certainly did, and the strong team spirit that had been built over the years faded in the four seasons when Subba Row was in command – as did the chimera of this upstart team winning the title. He was not disliked, but lacked Brookes’s craft and wisdom, nor was he an inspiring leader. His batting was still outstanding, and in 1958 he lifted his own club record to 300, at The Oval of all places. He also made his Test debut, an undistinguished one against New Zealand, but was picked for England’s ill-fated Ashes tour that winter, where he was doing well until breaking his wrist before the first Test. He did not return for England until the Oval Test next summer when, called in to open with Geoff Pullar against an already vanquished India, he made a five-hour 94. “He did not look completely at ease,” said Wisden.
Subba Row was never a thrilling batsman. John Arlott said he was not even “truly correct in his strokeplay”, but added that he had a good eye and “infinite patience and courage”. There was a suspicion of brittle fingers, and Peter May thought his fielding “rather laboured”. Jim Watts, then a young member of the Northamptonshire side, said: “He was a class player, but a nudger not a hitter, very controlled, very solid.”
In his final two seasons, Subba Row was less of a presence for his county because England began to recognise they wanted those qualities high up the order. In the West Indies, he came into the team for the fourth Test at Georgetown, and scored his maiden Test century, despite a damaged finger. He batted well against South Africa in 1960 before breaking a thumb, but did enough to be named one of Wisden’s Five. Then, in 1961, he hit his pinnacle. He opened with Pullar in all five Tests against Australia. England did not win the Ashes, though without Subba Row’s runs they might have lost 4-1, not 2-1. In the opener at Edgbaston, England – 321 behind on first innings – earned a draw through a magnificent century from Ted Dexter and a supportive one from Subba Row, achieved, in John Woodcock’s words, “imperturbably, inconspicuously and quite implacably”. He followed the three England players of Indian descent before him – Ranjitsinhji, Duleepsinhji and the Nawab of Pataudi – by making a hundred on Ashes debut. At The Oval, with England 238 adrift, he successfully led the resistance with 137, though the Ashes had already gone. And with that, so had Subba Row. Before the Test, he announced that “the time has come to think of the future”, and that he intended to retire, aged 29.
Northamptonshire, meanwhile, had slumped to second-bottom. Watts, who later became a successful county captain himself, remembered Subba Row with some affection. “I liked him. He was always charming and very encouraging to the youngsters. He was also very fair-minded. One day he was given not out after a huge nick. He didn’t walk, but he made sure he got out next ball.” Was he the right captain? “No,” said Watts. And, under the new captain, Keith Andrew, the county began climbing again.
Subba Row and May were the last significant cricketers to have careers shortened by the conventions of amateurism, before the outdated distinction of gentlemen and players was abolished 18 months later, in 1963. Both might have had another decade of Test cricket. But Subba Row, perhaps even more than May, was to have an important afterlife within the game. At first, he concentrated on the fast-growing world of public relations, helping Britain’s apple growers fight back against the increasingly prominent (and tasteless) import, Golden Delicious.
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But in 1964 he joined the Surrey committee and teamed up with the exuberant ideas man Bernie Coleman, to modernise first the club, then the English game. It started with an advertising board on the ground, horrifying Gubby Allen, the eminence of Lord’s but impotent at The Oval. Then came a festival starring The Who, a betting tent, and eventually the branding of the ground, initially as the Foster’s Oval. Subba Row had the crumbling Oval wall rebuilt cheaply by calling on the Brick Development Association, one of his first PR clients.
In 1967, he was elected to the MCC committee, and became part of the process of shifting power from the Lord’s Pavilion to what was then the Test and County Cricket Board. He was handed the honour of becoming manager of the 1981/82 tour of India, his ancestral home, though it was a difficult trip, on and off the field. And in 1985 he reached what was then the summit of English cricket administration, as chairman of the TCCB. His predecessor, the emollient Charles Palmer, was a traditional figurehead. Subba Row saw himself as the No.1, commanding events. He upgraded the title of the secretary (AC Smith) to the grander “chief executive”. But Smith was somewhat hemmed in. “Raman was very much the leader, and he was very forceful,” recalled Peter Lush, the marketing chief. “It could undermine what you were doing.”
This peaked during the tumultuous 1987-88 tour of Pakistan, when Lush was manager. Following the furious row between Mike Gatting and Shakoor Rana, Subba Row flew out and impulsively offered the England team a £1,000-a-man bonus. They took it, of course, but some had misgivings, since neither of the combatants had handled the matter well. Then, for the next English summer, Subba Row appointed Ted Dexter to replace May as chief selector, with only a semblance of consultation.
Under the new set-up, Ossie Wheatley became chairman of the cricket committee, and had a veto over the captaincy: he used it to sack Gatting. The press assumed this was due to newspaper revelations about a barmaid; in fact, Wheatley had been appalled by an England captain arguing with an umpire. And by now the county chairmen were finding the Subba show a little wearying: he was replaced by a mellow figure from Northamptonshire, Frank Chamberlain, who had a much lighter hand on the tiller.
But this was far from the end of Subba Row’s role in cricket. The neutral umpiring he championed came to pass, as did the position of Test match referee, which gave him a new lease of life: he took charge of 41 Tests between 1992 and 2001. Old age did not treat him kindly, but his marriage was strong, and his multi-talented wife, Anne, acted as his ambassador. For someone whose playing days were all too short, he enjoyed a huge part in the direction and development of the game.
