1972 saw Glamorgan record only one Championship victory, whilst for the first time since 1922, they failed to win a home match in the competition. They were also bottom of the Sunday League, besides reaching the third round of the Gillette Cup. The season had also seen the introduction of an additional one-day competition with 55 overs matches taking place during the first two months of the season. The Welsh county met with mixed success in the Benson and Hedges Cup, progressing from the group stages to the quarter-finals where they were beaten by Warwickshire.
For most Glamorgan supporters the highlight of the season came at Swansea in late August when Alan Jones and Roy Fredericks shared a record opening stand of 330, with the West Indian making a superb 228*. His five-hour stay at the crease confounded his critics who felt he was too loose for Championship cricket, besides prompting a group of supporters at Swansea to make a special presentation to the West Indian for his efforts. “The St. Helen’s Balconiers” duly came into being and, ever since, they have been supportive of matches at Swansea and further afield, besides organising an annual awards evening for the Swansea-area contingent.
Around that time it was also confirmed that Tony Lewis would be the England captain for the MCC winter tour to India, Pakistan and Ceylon after regular captain Ray Illingworth decided not to tour the sub-Continent. It was Tony’s first tour as England captain as well as being his first opportunity on the international stage after much success with the Welsh county.
The Test series between England and Pakistan during 1972/73 also aroused great interest in the Principality, not least because both captains – Tony Lewis and Majid Khan – played for Glamorgan. Indeed, at Lahore in early March, the pair spun the coin as for one of the few times in the history of Test cricket the two captains were county colleagues. All three Tests against Pakistan ended in draws, but in the earlier series with India, Tony steered the England side to victory during the First Test at Delhi and later hit 125 in the Fourth Test at Kanpur.
Whilst the 1st XI met with little success during 1972, the 2nd XI and Under25 team had a decent summer with the latter reaching the Final of the newly-instigated Warwick Pool Knockout One-Day competition. Under the coaching of Phil Clift and the captaincy of Graham Reynolds, they beat Hampshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset in the group stages before defeating Warwickshire in the semi-final. However, they were beaten by eight runs in the Final at Edgbaston by Middlesex.
Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
The success of the young cricketers led the committee to optimistically look ahead to the future, with the result that Don Shepherd and Peter Walker, with a combined tally of 1,084 appearances between them for the Welsh county, duly made their final appearances for the daffodil county in 1972. Walker had been in and out of the side during 1972, whilst being increasingly involved with media work for BBC Wales as well as several national newspapers. As far as Shepherd was concerned, his illustrious first-class career had begun at The Oval in 1950, and at his request, his last first-class appearance also came on the same ground with ‘Shep’, in the absence of Tony Lewis, also captaining the side.
After Roy Fredericks had a made a brisk century, ‘Shep’ was able to declare and set the home side a target of 297 in a fraction under four hours. For a while, it looked las if the champion bowler would go out on a high by leading Glamorgan to victory, but Surrey’s tail hung on at 252-8, with Don claiming his 2,218th and final wicket as Tony Cordle caught Younis Ahmed.
‘Shep’ did not appear in the club’s last three Championship matches but he did play in the last two games in the John Player Sunday League against Surrey at Swansea and Worcestershire at Colwyn Bay, with the veteran bowling the final over of the opponent’s innings. In a career where “c Walker b Shepherd” had gone into the scorebook on 175 occasions in first-class matches, it was very fitting that Peter should catch two of the Worcestershire batsmen in their closing over.
It wasn’t though quite the last over in Glamorgan colours as Shepherd and the rest of the Glamorgan squad visited Zambia during late September and early October. The visit, sponsored by the Moorwell Motor Company of Cardiff, had been the brainchild of Shepherd himself, following a successful visit the previous Autumn with Gloucestershire. The itinerary included a trio of three-day matches against the Zambian national tour, with the itinerary interspersed with a couple of two-day games against a Copperbelt Invitation XI, with the second at Mufulira seeing Don bowl for the final time in Glamorgan ranks.
There were also some one-day contests with the last being a light-hearted affair at the Shelton Oval in Lusaka as Don led a team called the Ancients and Ravens, made up of members of the local sports club against the Welsh county. After bowling eight economical but wicketless overs against his county colleagues, Don then had a merry spree with the bat hitting 6 fours and a trio of sixes before being caught by Malcolm Nash off the left-arm chinamen of Roy Fredericks.