Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

year he would bowl around a thousand overs and play fifty or sixty innings – and there were others in the county game who worked as hard. ‘Burn-out’ was rare; indeed the term was unknown. There was also very little fitness training, apart from the occasional indoor circuit-training in the winter fromwhich Kent’s captain usually excused himself. 22 Shepherd was blessed with an almost ideal physique for a hard-working allrounder and he believes that he thrived on hard work rather than suffering from it: he was immensely strong in the upper body and, with powerful legs, could run in and bowl day after day without tiring. In 1983 Ivo Tennant wrote: ‘A decade ago I was coached by Shepherd and well remember being awed by the size of his chest. His strength is huge. Woe betide the fieldsman who gets in his way when he winds himself up.’ 23 Shepherd preferred the slightly greater effort of bowling ‘up the slope’ on those grounds where there was a difference, believing that it favoured his style to do so, for example from the Pavilion End at Canterbury. The back problem that cropped up during the Test matches in 1969 was to plague him on and off for the rest of his career but it never affected his commitment. Today, when the nominally far fitter cricket professionals seem very injury-prone, it might seem to some extraordinary that a professional cricketer could play at the top for twenty years without ever suffering a serious, career-interrupting injury. But as Shep explains you are often as fit as you feel; and if your commitment is unwavering and the side needs you then you play, even though it sometimes hurts. Derek Underwood says that Shepherd ‘ran in every day for his county and bowled his heart out … beyond the call of duty. He was a top pro ... he cared about his team … he got us out of the mire time and time again. He’d even bowl fifty overs at Boycott – and that’s enough to kill anybody off!’ 24 Nearly two decades after his first-class debut back in early 1965 John Shepherd was playing first-team cricket in the County Championship and the one-day competitions for the struggling county Gloucestershire. It is worth quoting Wisden ’s description of Shepherd’s 1984 season in full: In his 41st year John Shepherd was an example to all, with only John Lever among faster bowlers getting through more overs all summer. [He bowled 970 overs in all competitions]. Shepherd was still a match for the best, especially when conditions gave him some assistance. The help he gave to David Lawrence also began to show dividends. The loyalty and effort that Shep, at the age of 40, was giving to his adopted county Gloucestershire was no less than he had given over sixteen years to Kent – a loyalty that, as we shall see, was not reciprocated when he was summarily deemed surplus to the hop county’s requirements in 1981. Introduction 13 22 One memorable occasion excepted, when the television cameras had been invited in and Colin Cowdrey felt he should take part – which led to the captain being confined to his bed ‘for a week’ with pains all over his body! 23 Ivo Tennant, article in The Times , 16 June 1983. 24 Interview with the author, 16 October 2008.