Geraint Jones      

No player better encapsulated the fluctuating fortunes of the 2005 Ashes series than Geraint Jones. Fast-tracked into the Test team at the expense of a superior gloveman, Chris Read, Jones' selection was widely debated. He contributed energy to the cause and vital runs at key moments - none more important than his 85 in a stand of 177 with Andrew Flintoff at Trent Bridge - but he also produced enough fumbles for an edge to become a heart-in-the-mouth moment. He clung on to his place, however, and he also clung on to the chance that really mattered, at the very end of England's two-run win at Edgbaston, and emerged from the series more or less in credit - if not with his place secure.

Born in Papua New Guinea to Welsh parents, Jones lived and learned his cricket in Australia until he was 22. He was almost 27 when he first came to the attention of the England selectors, but he had timed his run to perfection.

In the 2003 season - Alec Stewart's last - Jones scored the best part of 1000 runs at an average of more than 50. After a brief stint at Glamorgan, he had moved to Kent, whose supporters are connoisseurs of fine keeping, but his weight of runs in the 2nd XI became a major factor in Paul Nixon's controversial return to Leicestershire.

Jones was rewarded with a call-up to England's Test squad to tour West Indies, and after displacing Read behind the stumps in the fourth and final Test in Antigua, he cemented his place with a thrilling century against New Zealand at Headingley, where his sixth-wicket alliance with Flintoff had England fans rubbing their hands with glee. His counterpunching style remained seemingly well designed for a momentum-seizing half-century, but he had many critics and he managed just two fifties in ten Tests before being dropped in favour of Chris Read in August 2006.

He regained the No. 1 slot for the 2006-07 Ashes - a controversial choice - but after three unproductive Tests Duncan Fletcher was forced to hand the gloves back to Read. The emergence of Matt Prior in 2007 and the replacement of Fletcher, a fierce advocate of Jones's, with Peter Moores meant he slipped down the pecking order.

Jones, who is a fully trained pharmacy technician, never seriously threatened to regain his England place but the winter of 2006-7 was not quite the end of his international adventures: five years later, he played for Papua New Guinea in the ICC World Twenty20 qualifiers, which took place in Dubai. Back at Kent, he has become an ever-present and vital member of the county's line-up, winning a respect which perhaps eluded him at international level.

Towards the end of the 2012 season, against Derbyshire at Canterbury, he played his 100th consecutive Championship match, a sequence stretching back to 2006 and a suitably celebratory finish to his Benefit Year. He became the tenth cricketer in Kent's history to achieve the feat and the first since Ray Dovey, a left-handed bat and offspinner from Tunbridge Wells, reached the landmark at Headingley in 1952. It was a mark of the committed manner in which he played his county cricket and the respect in which he was held in the fist-class game.
ESPNcricinfo staff