Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

points. Then to cap a stunning month Shepherd took five wickets in each innings against Leicestershire at Folkestone. In one-day cricket in 1973 Kent not only retained their Sunday League crown but also won the Benson and Hedges Cup for the first time. The B&H campaign started with comfortable wins in three of the four Group games and then there was a quarter-final victory against Hampshire. The semi-final was against Essex at Canterbury where a crowd of 15,000 began to assemble at 5.30 in the morning! After Kent batted disappointingly Essex seemed on course for a win when the door to a Kent victory was opened by Shepherd as their opponents, chasing a modest 170 for a win, lost two wickets in an over including Turner to ‘a marvellous diving catch by Knott’. 69 Essex subsided to 123 all out and Kent were on their way to a Lord’s final for the third time, where they won a hard-fought match against Worcestershire by 39 runs. The Sunday League was also a triumph for a Kent team who secured the retention of their title as early as 12 August, with two games still to play. John Shepherd played in all but one of the matches and bowled a full eight overs in most of them. His performances both with ball and bat were solid rather than spectacular – 151 runs at 30.20 and 10 wickets at 32.50. But whilst these aggregate results are unremarkable, they hide the occasional sparkling performance – none more so than in the match against Somerset at Canterbury when, coming in with Kent on 208 for four with two overs to go, he propelled the side to a total of 241 with a spectacular assault on his fellow Barbadian Hallam Moseley. Shep hit 26, including four sixes in one over, one of which was a straight drive which ‘sent the ball soaring over the Frank Woolley stand – a feat only achieved twice before in the long cricketing memory of … Les Ames.’ 70 Over the season as a whole Shep, in all competitions for Kent, took 116 wickets and scored 1,040 runs – the modern double once again. He also won a trophy presented by The People newspaper to the cricketer who hit the most sixes in the season. Kent’s success in 1973 was very much a team effort and Mike Denness showed that his captaincy skills were especially suited to the one-day game. Denness’ successful leadership of Kent led to his appointment as captain for the five-Test MCC tour of the West Indies in February to April 1974. Denness had his county friends and colleagues Knott and Underwood in the tour party with him and another Kent teammate in Bernard Julien in the opposing ranks. But John Shepherd’s rather remote chance of being called up to face England by the West Indies selectors in recognition of his fine first-class season in 1973 were to be dealt a final and fatal blow. For in October, when the English season was over, Shepherd was to fly to South Africa as a member of the Derrick Robins tour party and to be granted the ‘accolade’ of ‘honorary white man’ for seven weeks. We are the Champions 63 69 John Woodcock in The Times , 28 June 1973 70 Dudley Moore in Wisden , 1974.