Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

Woolmer was to be any rival for John Shepherd’s all round skills. Mike Denness recalls how valuable it was for him as captain to have the predominantly swing-bowling Shepherd performing in tandem with the seamer Woolmer – especially in the limited-overs game. Denness tells how the two of them sowed seeds of doubt in the minds of the batsmen with their contrasting styles. He also recalls how Shepherd would be able to bowl shorter or longer spells as was required – and that he never seemed to need much warming up, and hardly ever bowled a ‘loosener’. Mike Denness, who captained Shepherd in nearly 250 matches for Kent between 1969 and 1976, saw him as an attacking not a defensive bowler – especially in the three-day game – and says that, because of his allround skills, his fitness and his absolute reliability Shepherd’s name would always be one of the first on the team sheet during what were Kent’s glory years . 110 In the dressing room Shepherd was also a quiet source of advice and sometimes comfort – to the younger players especially. Mike Denness had now been captain of Kent for two full seasons and had already put three trophies in the cabinet – and one or two misses as well. Expectations for 1974 were understandably high – the standard set in the ‘glory years’ was such that to win one of the four county competitions was no more than the norm and, especially for the cricket traditionalists who were still unsure of the true merits of one-day cricket, nothing less than a top-four finish in the County Championship (achieved in four successive years from 1970 to 1973) would do. In the event the purists were to be disappointed as Kent fell to tenth in the three-day competition, but there was another trophy to be celebrated as the Gillette Cup returned to the county for the first time in seven years. For John Shepherd, returned from his first tour in South Africa, 1974 was a relatively quiet year albeit one with no let-up in his workload. He played in all but two of Kent’s twenty County Championship matches, all five of the games in their successful Gillette Cup run, all five of the B&H matches and all sixteen games in the Sunday League. He played 52 innings, scoring 914 runs and bowled 859 overs, taking 89 wickets in all competitions. The bowling burden was all the greater as strike bowler Bernard Julien missed much of the season through injury and Shepherd often had to open the bowling, which was not always the ideal use of his talent. Highlights included the two occasions when he took six wickets in an innings in the Championship – against Glamorgan at Maidstone (six for 42) and against Warwickshire at Canterbury (six for 67). The Glamorgan match was a reduced, one-innings contest, won by Kent when Shep and Bob Woolmer, with Underwood away on international duty, exploited a green wicket to dismiss their opponents for 97. Against Warwickshire in August during Canterbury week the first-day strip was also green and damp and Shepherd, bowling 33 overs unchanged, and Woolmer again prospered with Warwickshire being shot out for 146. The Consummate Professional 85 110 Interview with the author, 16 October 2008.