'I could have cried myself to sleep'
Wicketkeepers are supposed to be bonkers or brash or both. Geraint Jones is neither, leaving Emma John to probe his quiet sensitivity for a core of steel
31-Mar-2006
Wicketkeepers are supposed to be bonkers or brash or both. Geraint Jones is neither, leaving Emma John to probe his quiet sensitivity for a core of steel
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Geraint Jones is the kind of man your granny would approve of. He turns up early for our appointment. He has clean, boyish features which, with the help of the England blazer, suggest a well-mannered head boy rather someone on the verge of 30; he was England's second oldest player in the first Test at Nagpur. Halfway through our interview, when a piano interrupts, he picks up the recorder and holds it carefully to his mouth for the next half an hour.
There must be something slightly unhinged under this veneer of
smiling normality. The tradition of England wicketkeeping demands
at least one form of obsessive behaviour, be it ultra-patriotism or
setting a timer on your Weetabix. "Generally I feel I'm stable," he says,
laughing. "There are so many characters in the side and I'm a fairly
quiet-natured person. If I tried to be loud and boisterous I'd probably
spend more time concentrating on that than my wicketkeeping."
Perhaps a summer studying Jack Russell's psyche has immunised
him. Jones had the former England keeper on hand during the
Ashes and was determined to ransack his brain for tips. "He's a very
natural keeper, so he's very good in terms of thought processes,"
Jones says. "Keeping's all about being relaxed but alert, so the thing
is not to create tension. He's great to speak to about ways of reducing
that tension, being at your best in terms of concentration but very
relaxed in your hands and shoulders."
Russell still sends the odd piece of advice via text message - "Don't
4get 2 pack the beans" perhaps? - but Jones has always maintained
a certain independence in his training. "I've got where I am from
working a lot of stuff out myself, so I pretty much know my game and
know what I need to adjust." His style is as much of a hybrid as his
accent. Like any aspiring Aussie gloveman, he was indoctrinated with
the Ian Healy style of keeping - long catches taken on the inside hip.
But his method has since had to adapt to English conditions. "I grew
up doing it the Healy way but I just don't feel that suits my game. I try
to be as natural in my movements as I can."
Remarkably it took him only four years of professional cricket
to become England's No. 1 keeper - and two of them were in Kent's
2nd XI. "Looking back I'm glad it happened all so quickly," he says.
"I was a little bit older than the other guys, so I didn't have the time
frame that others had." He points to the seven years it took Marcus
Trescothick and Andrew Strauss to make it from county debut to
England cap. Has the process felt rushed? "It's felt right the whole
way along, I've been ready for each progression."
But he admits it has left him
exposed. "I've had such a quick
rise that in a way I've learned
on the job. And, yeah, I've made
some mistakes but I've learned
from all of them." Last year's
Ashes series had plenty to teach
him - not about technique but
how to deal with hard knocks.
From the moment he put down
both Jason Gillespie and Glenn
McGrath on the third day of the
series at Lord's - the last two
wickets added 95 runs and took
the first Test out of England's
reach - the ink began to flow.
Overcoming the critics was, says
Jones, his toughest trial to date.
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The poison pens were
put in the shade by the Sky
commentary team. "It hurts
when you hear ex-England
players calling for you to be
dropped from the side when the
Test match is only two days old"
- mentioning no names, Bob
Willis - "especially when people
have been in the position you're
in, knowing that's the last thing
they'd have wanted to hear. I did
get the feeling that I became
an easy topic to revert back to,
if there's not much else to talk
about."
He looked to Ashley Giles as
a model of how to respond. "He's been through the same but for a
longer period, so I did watch and learn from him. The best way is to
go out and perform fantastically." Jones stops short of pouring his
heart out to a diary - he says he does not have the discipline - but he
looks back on certain moments as vindications, personal replies to the
cynics. "That's how I try to deal with enemies," he says. "I still don't
like it but I've got used to it."
Old Trafford was, perhaps, the most important retort of his career.
On the third day of the Test, as England lost nearly the entire day to
rain and Shane Warne batted to save an Australian follow-on, Jones
missed Warne twice (one catch, one stumping). He returned "as low as
low could be" to the hotel. "That was when I thought things could not
have got any worse. It was a big turning point for me because I could
have easily sat in my room and
cried myself to sleep."
Instead Andrew Flintoff and
Steve Harmison scooped him up
and took him to the dog-track.
History does not record whether
any of them backed a winner,
but Jones left feeling like one.
"The next day I came out and
hit Glenn McGrath for six, four,
six," he remembers. "I got 28 off
12 balls, so I showed them what
my batting's about. And the way
I kept on that last day at Old
Trafford, with the ball turning,
and took that catch off Straussy's
knee - that's not really been
written about too much but I
know how well I kept that day."
Flintoff has been a special
ally. When they bat together
it looks as if Fred has brought
his little brother out to play
and there is an almost familial
affection between the two.
"We've got an understanding,
we don't need to say a lot but
we can recognise when we do
need to say something to each
other," says Jones. "We do get on
well off the field and that really
helps. That's why I enjoy batting
with him so much."
Around the hotel lobby
team members are
whiling away the hours
until 9.30pm, when their flight
to India takes off. At the next
table Kevin Pietersen chats to
one of the England support staff.
He and Jones could not be more
different in demeanour, yet they
have a personal experience that
gives them more in common
with each other than anyone
else in the team. Both have repatriated, courtesy of a British parent,
and now live thousands of miles away from their respective families,
in order to represent a country neither knew until his late teens.
It has been a long time since anyone questioned Jones's heritage.
As with Pietersen it filled some column inches when he arrived; and
the fact that he took an Englishman's place in the Kent side caused
some indigestion among the parishioners. But even the Australians
laid off him during the Ashes. "I was expecting to get some verbal
treatment but that wasn't there," he says. "Matt Hayden mentioned
the old club I played for in Brisbane when I was batting once. But it
was not like in previous years. When Martin McCague went over to
Australia he got some fearful stick."
Jones's unusual route to England has become a piece of much
quoted trivia. His parents, Emrys and Carol, left Wales in their mid-
20s to teach in Papua New Guinea and Jones was born four years
later in Kundiawa, a small Catholic missionary town set among the
mountains. "The pictures and the memories I've got are of a beautiful
place," says Jones. But by his sixth birthday the island was becoming
dangerous and his parents moved on to Queensland. With the current
political instability, Jones does not know if he will ever go back.
Toowoomba, where the Jones family settled, is a country town
about the size of Swindon but with more crop farms. Geraint loved
his sport but playing cricket for a living was only "a distant dream".
"You hear of guys who knew from the age of eight that was what
they wanted to do. But that wasn't me." At 12 he lost his mother to
cancer. He has said that event forced him to grow up more quickly
but he still had no particular ambitions. "Nothing grabbed me at all.
I'm quite lucky things have turned out the way they have because
otherwise I'd just have drifted along and worked to survive."
He took his first trip to Britain at 17, after leaving school. Three
years later, back in Australia with "an average job", he told his father
he wanted to move here. "He thought I was a bit mad," says Jones.
Why his son would want to do the reverse of his trip, to leave a
beautiful climate and enviable lifestyle for the more hidden charms
of Clevedon, in Somerset, and Abergavenny, Emrys could not fathom.
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"I had ideas of university" - Jones gives a short laugh - "and
getting some qualifications." Cricket was nothing other than "an
avenue in" to a British way of life. And a successful one it proved.
At his first club, Clevedon, he picked up a girlfriend, a university
student called Jenny who would come down to watch her father play
on the weekends. At his next club, in Abergavenny, he found a job.
The club president Brian Shackleton owned pharmacies in South
Wales; Jones was installed and began his pharmacy technician's
course. But he never finished it. Shackleton allowed his employee
time off to pursue his trial with Kent in the county's 2nd XI and
success spun him a new course. "If it wasn't for that freedom I don't
know what would have happened really," says Jones. "All the way
along, if I've ever had any thought or plans, the sport's taken over."
Jones rarely takes the glory for his achievements. Outside
circumstances always seem to have shaped them. This September
he will marry Jenny, who has been with him for nearly eight years
- even joining Kent's catering team when he moved there in 2000.
"We've tested each other out well and truly," he says with a laugh.
"She says that she's the reason I stayed in the country, so she takes
a lot of the credit for where I am. Which is fair enough because it's
probably true."
There was another wedding a few weeks ago. It was Jimmy
Anderson's and Jones bumped into Chris Read there. You imagine
the pair making small talk about the flowers, then gulping their
champagne in awkward silence. But no: it is, says Jones, a "very
amicable" situation. "There was never any animosity between us."
In confidence terms Jones knows he has turned a corner. He
says he still does not take his place in the team for granted - his
career has been too up and down for that - but he finally feels
comfortable with his role. "It's taken a couple of years but I think it
does in international cricket," says Jones. "I feel I'm at an exciting
stage because I know what it's all about now and what I need to do
to perform really well. So I feel that my performance will really be
lifted from now on."
He is particularly looking forward to the fact that in India, for
the first time in an away series, he will have a qualified wicketkeeping
coach to hand in Mark Garaway, England's new team
analyst. "Before there hasn't been that role so if you're finding it
hard it is tough to know who to speak to," says Jones. "I spend a bit
of time working with Matt Prior when we're away and we buddy up
in the gym. But it's more needing someone to talk to if you're not
feeling quite right technically - someone who can have an eye for it
and say, `You're not doing this as well as you were two weeks ago'."
After the tour he will return to the old Kent farmhouse (and "bit
of land") he shares with Jenny and prepare for their wedding. There
are the considerable logistics of family and guests from Australia to
manage and it all seems rather oddly grown-up. "At heart I still feel
17 or 18," he says. "It doesn't seem that long ago I was leaving
school." And with that, the baby-faced wicketkeeper of England
smiles courteously and hands back the recorder.
This article was first published in the April issue of The Wisden Cricketer.
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