Sport - Cricket

Simon Jones in England squad

By Ted Corbett

LONDON May 25. Simon Jones, who has the genes that make him the quickest bowler on the county circuit, has been called into the England squad for the second Test which begins at Edgbaston on Thursday, making 14 names to be sifted through.

I am assured it is not a bit of window dressing and that this 6ft 3in, 14 stone 23-year-old has a chance of playing instead of Matthew Hoggard who has performed poorly so far this season.

Jones is the son of Jeff Jones who bowled fast left arm for Glamorgan and took 44 wickets at 40 for England 30 years ago. The son is a right arm bowler with a reputation for wildness — like his father — which will come easily to Sri Lanka's heavy bats if he goes off beam regularly. They hit 79 off his 20 overs in their current tour match.

His pace is badly needed as Darren Gough is still absent after a knee operation. It was clear during the drawn match at Lord's that England cannot expect to win if it goes into a Test with four bowlers who are essentially the same in pace. The pitch may prevent England experimenting with Jones.

I hear bad reports of it this season and now I understand that it is damp and requires hours of sunshine to dry it out. The weather forecast tells of mixed weather right up to the Test. Jones is another England player who has benefited from a winter under the fierce eye of Rod Marsh at the Academy in Adelaide.

He has taken 13 wickets this season at 21.38 but his overall figures from 27 matches since he made his Glamorgan debut in 1998 show 60 wickets at 45 apiece.

Hoggard's wretched performance at Lord's needs explanation. He was ordered to rest from county matches by the England management so that he has had virtually no cricket this season beyond a Bradford League game he fixed up for himself and the Test. The League match was hardly a triumph since he bowled ten overs for 60.

At Lord's he looked, to borrow a racing figure of speech, short of a gallop and Hussain battered him round the park as Yorkshire lost to Essex in a Benson and Hedges quarterfinal on Wednesday.

There is likely to be one other change. The selectors have resolved to play Ashley Giles, the slow left arm spinner, in this Test. They are likely to leave out John Crawley, who made two useful contributions at Lord's and who is the most prolific scorer in the county matches.

After all, it is the ground on which Giles learnt his trade with Warwickshire. But the logic behind the intention to drop Crawley, who has made more runs since the Test, is difficult to understand. Hussain and Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, have so much faith in Giles that they wanted him promoted to one of the highest-paid contracted players. That ploy did not work — those who hold the purse strings reckoned he had not done enough to merit such a pay rise — but if the pair had uncomfortable moments at the selection meeting it must have been when they were asked why Giles was sent home, leaving five look-alike seamers to attempt to prize out those headstrong Sri Lankan batsmen.

Hussain let it be known that he was angry with those bowlers — because they failed to take control as Sri Lanka totted up 555 for eight declared — and his batsmen, because they were forced to follow their innings against bowling that, without Muttiah Muralitharan, looked little better than club standard.

He speaks from a position of strength. This week he has added a century against Yorkshire and a fifty against Derbyshire to his 57 and 68 in the Test.

The squad: Nasser Hussain, Mark Butcher, Andrew Caddick, Dominic Cork, John Crawley, Andrew Flintoff, Ashley Giles, Matthew Hoggard, Simon Jones, Alec Stewart, Graham Thorpe, Marcus Trescothick, Alex Tudor and Michael Vaughan.

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