Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

and especially the highly respected Les Ames would have also have reported positively back to the authorities at the end of the tour. On this first tour John Shepherd was an ‘honorary white’ – a bizarre status which required him to have a minder in the shadows who was there to sort out any situation which might be sensitive. For example, as Shepherd spent 95% of his time in areas that were reserved exclusively for whites, the minder had to smooth the way – with hotel and restaurant staff, and other guests who might question what a ‘Kaffir’ was doing in one of their exclusive places. This was not just a courtesy to Shepherd, but also a pragmatic necessity in order to keep the tour on track. Had there been an incident in which Shepherd was insulted or abused, and had this got out to the media as it probably would have done, then the tour would have been in jeopardy. The Robins tour was undoubtedly, as we have seen, a determined attempt by the white South Africa cricket authorities to keep the door open to the rest of the cricketing world and to try and present a more acceptable face to them. At its end Derrick Robins said that the tour ‘could do a lot towards re-establishing South Africa-England links in time for the scheduled MCC tour of South Africa in three years time.’ 84 This, of course, was to turn out to be wishful thinking and the only cricket visitors for the next seventeen years were those on the private and then rebel tours. The cricketing elements of the 1973 tour were secondary to the public-relations component. That, in truth, was why John Shepherd and Younis Ahmed were in the tour party in the first place and why, for example, they were asked to be in the side which played an ‘historic’ match against an African XI in Soweto at the beginning of the tour. It was pure PR: window-dressing which could not obscure the racial divide in cricket which, at that time, was as great as the divide in any other part of South African society. 85 With the benefit of hindsight Shepherd today recognises that he and Younis were being used and that their presence on this tour was tokenism. But he still feels, as he said at the time, that he ‘made a contribution to good race relations [in South Africa and Rhodesia]’ and that his South African connection was ‘from my point of view … a pleasing and enjoyable experience’. 86 Notwithstanding the real and scarcely disguised reason for the tour, some good cricket was nevertheless played and the tour party acquitted themselves well, losing only one of their thirteen matches. John Shepherd played well throughout the tour. The first of the three ‘mini-tests’ was at Newlands – the beautiful home of Western Province in Cape Town and hitherto an all-white preserve on the field of play. Shepherd showed his allround skills by taking four wickets in the home side’s first innings and Honorary White 71 84 Quoted in Johannesburg Star , 24 November 1973. 85 A second match against an African XI was arranged for Port Elizabeth but this was abandoned without play because of rain. 86 Quoted in Andre Odendaal, Cricket in Isolation , Cape Town, published by its author, 1977.