Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

available, once qualified, for selection by England. The rumour was true – Shepherd had had quiet ‘off the record’ conversations with both Colin Cowdrey and Les Ames about this very possibility. He would not have been the first player born in the Caribbean to play for England (that was the famous Lord Harris), nor the first non-white England cricketer (that was K.S.Ranjitsinhji), but he would have been the first Afro-Caribbean England cricketer – an honour that was to go to his Bajan compatriot Roland Butcher in 1981. But Shepherd’s selection for the 1969 England tour put paid to the possibility of qualifying for England and, in truth, he was very proud indeed to be putting on a West Indies blazer for the first time when he flew to England in March. As well as the blazer John Shepherd had a leather cricket bag which carried the legend ‘J.N.Shepherd West Indies’ on its side. Travelling alone ahead of the tour party Shepherd reckons that this bag helped smooth his passage through the red channel at British Customs with bags full of wedding presents with him! His first non-cricketing task was to find a house to set up home with Terry who would be joining him later in the summer – a two-bedroomed semi-detached bungalow in Sturry, near Canterbury, was bought for the princely sum of £4,250 and this was to be the family home for twelve years. The West Indies tour party, under Clyde Walcott’s management and Garry Sobers’ captaincy, arrived in England in April and John Shepherd proudly joined up with them at their London base at the Waldorf Hotel. Although it was his first tour, and he was a newcomer to the squad, Shepherd was not intimidated by the experience as he had an advantage over most of the others and that was his knowledge of English conditions – this gave him a particular credibility in the dressing room. And very English conditions indeed were the order of the day in one of the wetter Mays on record. On 10 May Colin Cowdrey was sitting in the dressing room at a rainy Canterbury and he wrote to John Shepherd to wish him well with the West Indies tour. The envelope was hand written by Cowdrey who addressed it to: John Shepherd, Esq. Champion of Kent on loan to the West Indies XI – a characteristically genial gesture from the always thoughtful Kent skipper. Match after match was a rain-curtailed draw and John Shepherd had few chances to shine – with the notable exception of the match against Gloucestershire at Bristol when the county were skittled out in their first innings for 113, with Shepherd taking eight for 40 in what was destined to be his best-ever first-class bowling performance. He was selected for the match against MCC at Lord’s in early June and was clearly in the selectors’ minds for the First Test later that month. The First Test took place at Old Trafford beginning on 12 June and, as he fervently hoped and expected, John Shepherd was in the team. At last the weather relented and having won the toss England rather ground their way to a large total – 413 off 197.5 overs, little more than two runs per over and Testing Times 44