On the 15th anniversary of the publication of Born to Bowl, Mayukh Ghosh tells us the story behind this wonderful biography of Don Shepherd.
Douglas Miller, even before he began writing books on cricket, was a familiar name to the members of The Cricket Society and the ACS. His pieces were often engaging and, more importantly, on previously untouched topics.
He had met many former cricketers while watching cricket in various parts of the world and became friends with many of them.
Don Shepherd was one.
No one had taken more wickets in First-class cricket without playing Test cricket.
2218 of them yet no Test cricket!
But he did serve Glamorgan for many years and a biography was long due.
Miller didn’t plan for it. Here’s how it began for him:
“In the late 1990s I joined the ACS and went to their AGM at Headingley. I knew no-one, but one of the items on the agenda was the series of county ground books that they were doing. There was no-one, they said, to take on Sussex, Somerset or Gloucestershire. As a self-employed market researcher, I reckoned I had the time to take on one of the books and offered to do Gloucestershire, none of whose grounds I had ever visited, as it is pretty convenient for Bucks, where I live. This project was a great success. People said I had gone further than before in my coverage of each ground and the book sold comparatively well (by ACS standards) through the county shop and my own efforts.”
And then the Stephen Chalke connection worked:
“At the same time Stephen Chalke, who had spoken to me once on the telephone about some matter, was bringing out his book with Bomber Wells, One More Run I went to the Cheltenham Festival, by now a member of Gloucestershire, hoping to get my book into the county shop and the (principally second-hand) book stall of Grenville Simons, whom I had met in the course of writing the book. My abiding memory is of wandering round with a handful of books while Stephen was dealing in box-loads with the public address urging one and all to buy his book – no mention of mine! That is when and where we first met and were to become great friends. He kindly reviewed my book and, I think, felt I had something to offer.”
“The telephone rang a few months later. Stephen told me he was thinking of bringing out a few books of cricketers who had deserved a biography but never had one. He had in mind Bob Appleyard and Keith Andrew. Would I like to do one? Well the most obvious possibility was Don Shepherd. I had been with Don in a Cricket Society party to the West Indies, where we had watched the last two Tests of the tour in April 1994 – England’s famous win at Bridgetown and Lara’s 375 at The Recreation Ground. The party had split in Barbados in such a way that there were only about a dozen of us with Don and I had got to know him very well and had kept in touch.”
Finally, a go-ahead from the subject sealed the deal:
“I met Don and gave him a copy of the Gloucestershire Grounds book to show what I could do. He had, in fact, long ago agreed that David Green or Martin Searby should have the chance to do a book with him, but, as I often say of them now both are sadly dead, I think neither was going to stay out of the pub for long enough to get the job done. Certainly, neither had made any serious move to take the matter up. So, Don agreed that I should write the book and was keen to cooperate. I was immensely lucky to have Stephen edit and publish the book, easily my best seller.”
Born to Bowl: The Life and Times of Don Shepherd was published by Fairfield Books, on June 21st 2004.
Anyone with a feel for cricket in the bygone era will find it an absorbing read.
Used copies of the book do appear on Amazon and AbeBooks and signed copies can be found in JW McKenzie’s store in Surrey.