David Clark (cricketer)

Clark was the tour manager of the 1970-71 English Ashes tour of Australia. The England fast bowler John Snow wrote that the tour "emphasised the gulf between players and administrators" and "I was sick of the biased attitude and incompetence which was apparent in cricket administration". Clark was described by the England captain Ray Illingworth as "an amiable, but somewhat ineffectual man" and there were soon divisions between him and the players.

He is likely to be best remembered for chairing the committee set up by the MCC in 1965 to "examine the future of county cricket in the widest possible terms and if thought fit to recommend alterations in the structure and playing conditions of the County Championship". The first-class counties rejected most of the recommendations made in the so-called "Clark Report", including those for reducing the County Championship to sixteen games and introducing a new one-day league, also of sixteen games. However, before many years had passed changes not dissimilar to these would be introduced. According to Mike Turner, a member of the Clark committee: "We started the ball rolling. The Clark Report was a great stimulus for fresh thinking."

Clark was born in Barming in Kent. He played first-class cricket for five years, appearing for Kent County Cricket Club. He was Kent's captain for the last three years of his career before retiring at the end of the 1951 season. He was President of MCC in 1977–78.

During World War II he served with the British Army, receiving a commission as an officer in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) on 16 March 1940. He was then a parachute instructor at Ringway during the formation of the British Army's airborne forces, and was subsequently attached to the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, with whom he fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. During the attack on Sicily his glider landed in the sea and he swam to shore with three other survivors. He was then posted to HQ 1st Airborne Division and ended up at the bridge in Arnhem during Operation Market Garden with 2 Para, where he was eventually taken prisoner. A modest man, he never mentioned his wartime service.

David Graham Clark (27 January 1919 – 8 October 2013) was an English cricketer, cricket administrator and British Army officer.