Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

reported for duty at Canterbury in April. The triumph of two one-day trophies the previous year was tempered by the fall in the County Championship to fourteenth – the lowest position for twenty years. And with Denness and Luckhurst gone from the playing staff, and Asif something of an unknown quantity as captain, it was clearly to be a time of change. During his months in Australia Shepherd had heard rumours that something sensational was brewing in the world of cricket but he was taken by surprise when, on 10 May, the news broke of Kerry Packer’s signing of eighteen Australians and seventeen other international players for his ‘Super Test’ series in Australia in 1977/78. The internationals from outside Australia included his county colleagues Underwood, Knott and his new captain, Asif Iqbal. They were soon to be joined by Bob Woolmer and Bernard Julien, so Kent was to provide five players for Mr Packer’s ‘circus’. It could have been six – Shepherd himself was committed to Footscray and although informal approaches were made to him from ‘World Series Cricket’ (as Packer’s enterprise was known) he elected to stay loyal to the Victoria grade side for another season rather than indicate to WSC that he was interested. John Shepherd had finished the 1976 season with a haul of nine wickets in his last two Championship matches and he soon showed that his form had not slipped as the 1977 season got under way. He suffered briefly from a shoulder injury but had shrugged this off by mid-May when in Bristol he took nine wickets in a match to help Kent beat Gloucestershire by an innings. Shortly after this there were nine wickets again as Kent trounced Middlesex at Dartford. But these feats were to be topped by an extraordinary performance in a rain-affected match against Lancashire during Tunbridge Wells week. Under leaden skies he took eight for 83 in 37 overs – one of three occasions in his career that he took eight wickets in an innings. By 17 June Shep had taken 36 wickets for Kent in all competitions and many more were to come. A rare ‘Man of the Match’ award came later in June but this time it was Shepherd’s batting that was rewarded as he almost single-handedly helped Kent post a respectable score of 226 in the first round of the Gillette Cup against Middlesex. Coming in with the county in trouble at 47 for five, he played one of the best innings of his career scoring 101, reaching his century, his only one in one-day cricket, in the last of the 60 overs. Despite Shepherd’s heroics Kent was to lose this match, but they fared better in the Benson and Hedges competition reaching the final at Lord’s in July where they were beaten by a Gloucestershire side responding well to Mike Procter’s inspired leadership. Kent chased 238 for victory but only Woolmer (64) and Shepherd (55) held up ‘Proctershire’s’ march to victory. There was frustration as well in the Sunday League where the title won so dramatically in 1976 was lost and Kent slipped to sixth in the table. But these one-day disappointments paled into insignificance as the county made a spirited attack on the County Championship. It was in this competition that John Shepherd’s bowling came dramatically to the fore – he took 87 wickets at a remarkably The Consummate Professional 93