Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

In June Shepherd had a remarkable allround four days at Trent Bridge. In Kent’s first innings in the Championship match he and Alan Ealham had a century partnership to rescue the county from 67 for six, with Shepherd going on to score 79 – his highest score of the season. Then, on the second day, when Nottinghamshire batted, and with Woolmer injured, he completed a phenomenal 46 overs, out of 103, taking three wickets for 95. In between these two performances he played in a Sunday League game, helping Kent to a win with one for 36 in 8 overs and then scoring the winning runs, in a brief partnership with Cowdrey, to see Kent home. It was four days of intense and unbroken cricket during which Shepherd bowled 67.3 overs and scored 125 runs. For Kent the triumph of the season came in the Gillette Cup with comfortable wins against Buckinghamshire, Durham and Leicestershire leading to a semi-final against Somerset at Canterbury in front of a crowd of 15,000. This was a nervier affair notable for the performance of a young eighteen-year-old Somerset cricketer described by John Woodcock as having ‘bowled, fielded and batted with any amount of promise’. His name was I.T.Botham and he was batting with confidence when John Shepherd managed to get him caught behind for 19. Then, when Kent chased Somerset’s modest total of 154, Botham with his first ball clean bowled a ‘pensive’ Colin Cowdrey for eight and got his revenge on Shepherd, having him caught ‘at cover point by Burgess with his hands in front of his face’. 111 Kent scraped through to the final – and in the years to come the world was to hear quite a bit more of the tyro Botham. It had been a cold and wet summer and it was no surprise when the Gillette Cup final between Kent and Lancashire was rained off on its planned Saturday date. Winds and some sun on the Sunday meant that play could take place on the Monday and Kent won another close game – although they struggled a bit, losing six wickets chasing a modest target of 119 for victory, with John Shepherd top-scoring with 19. Lancashire had been dismissed on a ‘churlish’ pitch – the highlight being Kent’s spectacular out-cricket, especially the run-outs of Clive Lloyd and David Hughes. The latter fell to a throw from John Shepherd, fielding at long leg, which hit the stumps and which reminded John Woodcock of Learie Constantine in his prime’. 112 During the winter of 1974/75 John Shepherd was in Rhodesia with the International Wanderers, the West Indies with D.H.Robins’ XI and then in South Africa with Derrick Robins again (see Chapter Five). Over the same months Shep’s county captain Mike Denness was captaining England in a torrid and unsuccessful Ashes tour in Australia – along with his Kent teammates, Knott, Underwood, Luckhurst … and Cowdrey who had flown out, at the age of nearly 42 for his sixth tour, as a replacement batsman. The Consummate Professional 86 111 John Woodcock, The Times , 15 August 1974. 112 John Woodcock, The Times, 10 September 1974.