Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

cricket master John Gay who helped young John develop technically and, just as important, as an individual as he grew and moved from childhood into his teens. At about this time John and his family moved to a house just beyond the boundary of a new, larger Alleyne School cricket ground. In Barbados there is no ‘off-season’ – the wonderful climate allowed cricket to be played almost every day – so a busy ground it was as well. Very occasionally, a hurricane stopped play! In May 1955, at the age of eleven, John saw his first Test match when the West Indies played Australia at the Kensington Oval. Sitting in the schoolboys’ stand he saw the precocious young Garry Sobers, playing his third-ever Test and opening the batting, hit ten fours in an innings of 43, including four off consecutive balls from Ray Lindwall. ‘That looks easy,’ John thought to himself – and when he saw Lindwall clean bowl Sobers’ opening partner J.K.C.Holt, with the stumps careering back to the wicket-keeper, he couldn’t understand how the batsman, playing carefully forward, had missed the ball! That was John’s first sight of the lethal effect of a fast and swinging ball. In 1958 the tourists to the West Indies were Abdul Kardar’s Pakistan and, at the First Test match at Bridgetown, John Shepherd saw his neighbour Conrad Hunte score a century in his first-ever Test innings and his hero Everton Weekes score 197. Then the visitors followed on with a deficit of 473 only to score 657 for eight declared in their second innings with Hanif Mohammed scoring 337 in over 16 hours at the crease. At that match John saw the lightning fast and ferocious Jamaican Roy Gilchrist running on to the field with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his shoulder and pumping the air in excitement at playing in his first home Test. Gilchrist opened the West Indies bowling to Hanif Mohammed who never saw the first few balls he received. At the same match the legendary slow left-armer Alf Valentine was sitting in the pavilion near to the schoolboy stand and was throwing a cricket ball from hand to hand, as spinners do. He saw John Shepherd watching him intently – Valentine threw him the ball. ‘Here you are sonny’, he said to John who despite his surprise had the presence of mind to catch it and mumble a ‘thank you’. It was his first proper leather cricket ball – and the cricket bug was truly alive and well from that moment on in the young John Shepherd’s soul. At Alleyne School, John’s cricket developed quickly and he was soon identified as the best cricketer at the school and was in the school team at 14 when his school report identified him presciently as a ‘promising allrounder’. By the age of 17 he was made the captain of the cricket XI, as well as captain of the school. But although the school had a good academic record it was not one of the elite schools – those described by Keith Sandiford in his book of the same name as The Cricket Nurseries of Colonial Barbados . 35 These schools had more organised talent-spotting and links 20 Belleplaine Boy 35 Keith.A.P.Sandiford, The Cricket Nurseries of Colonial Barbados , University of the West Indies Press, 1999.