SHEP by David Shepherd & David Foot

SHEP (First UK Edition in Illustrated Dust Jacket)

The Warm and Candid Autobiography of Cricket's Best-Loved Umpire, with a Foreword by Richie Benaud

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: SHEP: My Autobiography
• Authors: David Shepherd & David Foot
• Publisher: Orion, London
• Publication Date: 2001
• ISBN-13: 9780752845920
• ISBN-10: 0752845926
• Edition Details: First published in Great Britain in 2001. Hardcover issue with dust jacket.
• Binding: Publisher's dark blue-black cloth boards with stained page edges, issued with a full-colour photographic dust jacket.
• Physical Format: Octavo hardcover, approximately 235 x 155 mm. Illustrated with black and white photographic plates.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
• Exterior / Boards: The dark cloth boards are clean, straight and tidy, with square spine edges and only a few small pale specks or fibres to the front board. The corners appear neat.
• Interior: The text block is tight and the pages are clean, with the black and white photographic plates free of markings. The page edges and paper are lightly toned, and a few tiny brown specks appear on the front free endpaper beside the jacket flap.
• The Dust Jacket: Present. The full-colour photographic jacket is intact with both flaps present, showing the umpire in white coat and cap on the front. It is protected in a durable archival-type plastic cover, which shows some cloudy mottling to the top of the front panel and speckling along the spine and edges.

Synopsis & Historical Value

Shep: My Autobiography is the life story of David Shepherd, the much-loved first-class umpire, published by Orion in London in 2001 with a foreword by Richie Benaud. Written with the cricket writer David Foot, it follows Shepherd from his Devon childhood through his playing career, first in Devon and then with Gloucestershire from 1965.

Shepherd retired as a player in 1979 and took up umpiring the following year. The book gives his account of the game's changes during his years in the white coat, including the arrival of the third umpire and the match-fixing scandals that shook cricket. It also recounts the controversies of the 2001 Old Trafford Test, where umpiring decisions influenced the result.

For collectors of cricket literature and sporting memoir, this is a warm first-hand record of a familiar figure of the international game, carrying praise from Steve Waugh and Shane Warne on the back of the jacket.

Author Profile: David Shepherd

David Robert Shepherd was born in Devon in 1940. He played 282 first-class matches for Gloucestershire before becoming a first-class umpire in 1981, making his international debut at the 1983 World Cup. He was the first umpire to officiate in at least one Test in every Test-playing nation of the time, and was awarded the MBE in 1997 for services to cricket. He died on 27 October 2009.

His co-writer David Foot (1929–2021) was a regional cricket writer whose other books include Harold Gimblett: Tormented Genius of Cricket (1984).

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