Fresh-faced, courteous and polite to a fault, Derek Underwood appeared to be too nice a man to excel against rough-hewn Australians and bouncer-happy West Indians in the cauldron of Test cricket. This was deceptive. Geoffrey Boycott, his longstanding England team-mate, described him as having “the face of a choirboy, the demeanour of a civil servant — and the ruthlessness of a rat catcher”.
Indeed, Underwood’s nickname was “Deadly”, bestowed because in helpful conditions he was exactly that. On rain-affected pitches his sharp left-arm cutters, delivered from a flat-footed run at near medium pace and allied with metronomic accuracy, made him almost unplayable. Even on placid pitches his immaculate control and subtle variations of line and length could frustrate and undermine the best batsmen.
Although he