Brief profile of Geraint Jones by Matthew Reed

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Player:

GO Jones

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DateLine: 13th February 2006

 

It is a telling sign of Geraint Jones’s swift cricketing progress that he hadn’t even kept wicket in a First-class match when Chris Read and James Foster had enjoyed their first chances of staking a claim to be the post-Stewart England wicket-keeper. It should be the Surrey legend who Jones offers his cricketing prayers to, as he was the man who firmly established the tenet that the England wicket-keeper has to be able to make runs. It is this which has created and sustained the Kent man’s England career, as his competence with the bat (especially as a counter-attacking no.7) has often been undermined by ham-fisted glovework. In the way that Alan Knott had Bob Taylor, so Jones looks to have Chris Read as a permanent, line-call rival. Read was ousted from the team after 8 Tests in the winter of 2003-4, where only against Bangladesh had he managed to score over 20. This was a decision of some controversy though; Read had been earmarked as the heir to Stewart for some years (his Test debut had come in 1999), and he was widely regarded as the best wicketkeeper in the country. Selector Rod Marsh was furious at the switch, although in making 48 runs for once out (though admittedly on a ridiculously flat Antiguan pitch), Jones had done enough to start in pole position in the English summer. Further sparky, boundary laden innings (including a maiden century at Headingley) strengthened his place as England romped through the summer, although his not infrequently botched catches and runs needlessly conceded meant that much media focus settled on him in a team which otherwise mostly picked itself. His boyish features make him seem smaller than his 5’10”, and one of the reasons for many doubting his ability with the glove may be that he resembles something of a chastised schoolboy whenever a catch goes begging. In the Ashes of 2005 he showed his fighting spirit by standing up to Glenn McGrath at Lords after he had dismantled the England top-order, and his partnership with Andrew Flintoff at Nottingham helped take England from an average score to a match winning total. However, his most essential moment came at Edgbaston, when he tumbled forward and hung on to the edge which flew off Michael Kasprowicz’s glove. It truly was a micro-second where the entire nation held its breath. The naysayers would have had a schadenfraude moment to savour had Jones fluffed it, but as it was the completed catch was arguably the seminal moment of the series.

 

Far less questions were asked about Jones in the Pakistan tour of late 2005, although for the first time in two years there were serious other questions about personnel and performance for the England team to answer. It is also fair to say that England’s lack of a wrist/mystery spinner (one who can make a ball spit and snarl) has asked less questions of Jones that might otherwise have been so. The England wicket-keeping debate is still open though, and fundamentally it still revolves around the issue of whether England want to play the best wicketkeeper or the best wicket-keeper batsman, although Matt Prior is now a rival in the latter category. Although a dropped catch can have a disproportionately deflating effect on a team, it is equally true that the fast scoring, boundary rich way Jones makes his runs can also wrest initiatives and swing momentum much more than a 100 ball 20 can. Jones has, unsurprisingly cemented a place in the England one-day team, although an experiment of having him open wasn’t really a success and deprived the team of his late innings hitting, although in the Twenty20 international at Bristol he hit 4 fours off 14 balls opening up. The travel heavy nature of current international cricket shouldn’t phase the Papua New Guinea born, Australian raised Jones though, and the fact that his First-class debut only came at the relatively advanced age of 24 may have given him a broader outlook on life in dealing with the slings and arrows of the life of the international cricketer.

 

(December 2005)

(Article: Copyright © 2006 Matthew Reed)