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Golden Gloves

Source: Times Online - June 12, 2005

Adam Gilchrist is a brutal batsman and a first-rate gloveman. Can Geraint Jones keep up with him?

Spare a thought for Geraint Jones. Of all the players expected to feature in the Ashes, the England wicketkeeper-batsman has the hardest task: he must stand comparison with Adam Gilchrist, his opposite number and the Garry Sobers of the modern age in his talent for turning matches with audacious strokeplay. Even Ashley Giles knows he bowled as well as Shane Warne the last time they faced each other in a Test, in Brisbane.

When it comes to being a No 7 with a licence to thrill, Jones is very much George Lazenby to Gilchrist's Sean Connery. History shows that it is not just opposing bowlers who are intimidated by Gilchrist's high-octane, whip-wristed batting. So are opposing wicketkeepers, who tend to be as anonymous as he is omnipresent.

The big question is how Jones will react if he finds himself in one of the best seats in the house as Gilchrist embarks on another of his mach-speed masterclasses. As Gilchrist averages a century every six and half test innings, the likelihood is that this will happen at some stage.

If Jones - still a novice to the international arena - is stricken with a king-sized inferiority complex, he would not be the first. In the 21 Test series Gilchrist has played since he appeared 5 and half years ago, he has averaged more with the bat than his rival keeper 19 times. Only Adam Parore, of New Zealand, and India's Parthiv Patel have ever matched him, Patel during Gilchrist's worst-ever trot two winters ago when he failed to reach 50 for 10 innings. While Gilchrist has scored 15 centuries for Australia (average speed nearly a run per ball), the only one they have conceded to a wicketkeeper in his time was made by Parore at Perth in December 2001.

It would be unreasonable to lambast Jones if he failed to match Gilchrist, who needs to clear the ropes eight more times to overtake Chris Cairns, on 87, as the leading six-hitter in Tests. But Jones knows this is the acid test. After all, he was promoted to England colours in the belief that he was the nearest thing to an embryonic Gilchrist they possessed.

Like Gilchrist, Jones is at his best when he trusts his instincts, with bat or gloves. Equally like Gilchrist, he puts down the occasional chance - Gilchrist missed two in the first session of the 2001 series - when going for those 50-50 balls that enter the air-space of first slip. Gilchrist's mantra is "never hesitate", and it is one that Jones is inclined to share.

But if Jones is going to cut and pull, as he likes to, he's going to have to be on top of his game. It is something he has been working on, along with his glovework, on which Jack Russell, the last England keeper to score a century in an Ashes Test, has been advising him.

The close attention of the fast bowlers is not all Jones must concern himself with. Warne will be twitching to get at him after bowling him through his legs during a County Championship match last month.

For all that, as a natural counter-attacker, Jones has the type of game England need and Australia respect. He has already built up a respectable portfolio of innings which, if they haven't quite turned Tests on their head, have certainly influenced them. Without him, England conceivably would not have beaten New Zealand at Leeds or West Indies at Edgbaston, or drawn with South Africa in Durban and Centurion.

It is doubtful if Jones and Gilchrist would play the way they do were their teams less successful (Australia won the first 15 Tests Gilchrist played, England eight of Jones's first nine). As it is, both are encouraged to go after the bowling.

Gilchrist is no stranger to failure, but who remembers that he has been out for nought 10 times in Tests? A career average of 55.7 is exceptional, but it doesn't accurately reflect the games he has utterly transformed. He is most inspired when his side are 260 for five, or worse, and need his help: two-thirds of his centuries have been made in such situations.

Never mind his successes, what's the secret of his failures? Nearly half his dismissals have been to spinners, with India's Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh claiming his wicket 13 times between them. Such figures can be misleading, as India are heavily reliant on this pair, but Gilchrist's Test record against India and Sri Lanka combined - an average of 31.5 from 19 Tests - suggests that, if fit, Giles might have a role to play frustrating this most dangerous of left-handers.

As sometimes happens with wicketkeepers, Gilchrist and Jones had to search for their openings - searches that both began on the eastern side of Australia. Jones's family originated in Wales and washed up in Toowoomba, Queensland, via Papua New Guinea, where he was born. After his mother died from cancer when Jones was 12, his father relocated the family to Brisbane to further his son's sport.

Jones attended a keeping course at the Australian academy in 1996, five years after Gilchrist - who was by then on the verge of the Australia one-day team - first walked through its doors. When Gilchrist entered the academy he was living in rural New South Wales, but his opportunities for first-team state cricket were limited and he moved to Perth in 1994, where he sold himself as a wicketkeeper-batsman. He first played for NSW as a batsman.

Jones had to travel even further. He got only as far as grade cricket in Brisbane, so after an exploratory season with Lydney in 1995, he moved to the land of his father in 1998. Finding his path into the Glamorgan side blocked, he moved on to Kent. There, after three productive seasons in the second XI, he did enough to persuade the county to sack Paul Nixon and make him their first-choice keeper. Eighteen months later, in April last year, England were equally won over by his "never hesitate" philosophy and sacked their first-choice gloveman, Chris Read, to get him in the side.

So, although his was a more roundabout route, in terms of age Jones actually beat Gilchrist to Test cricket by three months (both were 27), although the Australian trod the one-day boards for three years before Ian Healy's Test retirement.

There is a case for saying that neither should have been made to wait so long, but their cricketing educations were unorthodox, and there is prejudice in sport as there is in any other walk of life.

Like most allrounders, wicketkeeper-batsmen are liable to show fatigue as series progress: figures suggest that neither player is as effective in fourth and fifth Tests as he is in earlier games.

It may not be long before Gilchrist, 33, is ready to call it a day; perhaps after the next World Cup. His priorities changed with the birth of his first child three years ago. By contrast, Jones, who only recently got engaged, is just setting out in both his cricket and personal life.

Both are gentle, likeable men, less abrasive than many from the keepers' union. After their only meeting on the field to date, in the Edgbaston one-dayer last year, they took the opportunity to have a chat. Whatever happens this summer, they are unlikely to be the ones falling out over anything.

- SIMON WILDE