Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

And Tony Cozier, John Shepherd’s distinguished Bajan compatriot, probably summed up everyone’s opinions as well as anybody when he said to me that Shep was ‘ … an outstanding all-round cricketer and one of the game’s true gentlemen.’ 32 Jim Swanton, writing about the three Barbadian ‘Ws’, Walcott, Worrell and Weekes, said that they had been ‘Brought up in the cricket tradition of their island with a due sense of chivalry and good manners, they never slipped from grace, however tense the occasion, however strong the provocation’ and then ‘I can pay [John Shepherd] no higher compliment than to thank him for bringing to our Kentish fields a reflection of these qualities.’ 33 And it is to Barbados that we now journey to begin the story … . Introduction 16 32 Tony Cozier, e-mail to the author, 29 September 2008. 33 E.W.Swanton, Kings of Barbados, in John Shepherd Benefit Souvenir , 1979.