Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

The stimulus to embrace the game came also from young John’s growing awareness of the feats of Barbadian cricketers in the West Indies team – especially in 1950 when the ever more exciting news from the West Indies tour of England crackled in on the wireless. There were six Barbadians in that tour party which was captained by one of them – John Goddard. But it was not the captain, a white Barbadian and scion of the Goddard’s rum family, who thrilled the young Shepherd’s senses. It was Frank Worrell, Clyde Walcott and Everton Weekes who were the batting backbone of the side and who scored four centuries between them. The West Indies won their first-ever series against England in England and the legend of calypso cricket was born – ‘Cricket, Lovely Cricket’. The small but powerful Weekes particularly appealed to the young John – especially when news came in of his century and record stand with Frank Worrell in a winning cause at Trent Bridge. The three Ws and, for John, Weekes in particular, were real role models for this young country boy. True, Weekes was a city boy from Bridgetown, not a country boy like John – but his origins, born in a wooden chattel house in an urban slum, and his subsequent achievements were an inspiration – as they had also been for Conrad Hunte. In 1950 Shepherd remembers seeing a picture of the three Ws in a cricket magazine and he decided that Weekes was to be the man on whom he would model himself as he grew up – even to the extent, eventually, of copying his central-parting hairstyle and neat moustache. Whilst the three Ws were at the top of the Barbados cricket pyramid, closer to home local boy Conrad Hunte was making everyone sit up and take note. In 1951 John Shepherd saw his close neighbour suddenly mature, scoring heavily for Belleplaine (including, in one match, hitting the longest six ever seen sailing into the distance over the pavilion), getting selected for the representative Barbados Cricket League match against their rivals in the Barbados Cricket Association (and scoring a century) and then, shortly afterwards, being chosen to play for the full Barbados side and scoring 63 in his debut first-class innings. If the nineteen-year-old Hunte from Shorey Village, just up the road, could make it, then why not another Belleplaine boy? It was soon apparent that John Shepherd, young though he was, was indeed a gifted cricketer in the making. By the age of ten he was allowed occasionally to field in adult games on the Belleplaine ground and he began to learn his craft on that compact ground at his primary school. Cricket was beginning to be young John’s passion and it was, as he now recalls, true that all ‘he ever wanted to do was to play cricket’. But, under his mother’s watchful eye, he did not neglect his schoolwork and in 1955 he passed the eleven plus and secured a scholarship to Alleyne School, one of Barbados’ oldest secondary schools and conveniently located right in the centre of Belleplaine. Conrad Hunte had been a previous scholar at the school but, Hunte apart, the school had not much of a cricket tradition. It did, though, have a small pitch and cricket was firmly on the curriculum and the headmaster and sports masters were very keen – especially as old boy Hunte began to make his way in the game. A key influence was the Belleplaine Boy 19