S Berry: Giles has all-round potential (17 May 1998)

Sunday, May 17, 1998

Giles has all-round potential

By Scyld Berry

A CLUNK of ill omen came from under the bonnet of the car being driven by Ashley Giles's father. He was taking his son to an all-important trial at Edgbaston, and was driving along the M40, just past High Wycombe. Not any more, he wasn't. Clunk, clunk, clunk, stop.

Andrew Giles, Ashley's elder brother, had written to every first-class county on his brother's behalf after Surrey had rejected the young left-arm pace bowler who wanted to turn spinner. The only positive interest had come from Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. And now the car's bearings had gone. They weren't just going to be late, they were going to miss the trial altogether.

County cricket can be a haphazard system, too. Dozens of applicants write in every year to every county, and in sorting out the sheep, the odd goat is bound to escape. Last winter, one young batsman with several first-class hundreds to his name, rejected by his county, wrote to every other county and received one reply, which said no. Happily for English cricket, "Warwickshire try to have a look at every applicant," according to their chief executive Dennis Amiss.

"Come back same time next week," Mr Giles was told when he rang Edgbaston to explain about the breakdown. Ashley had actually been given one trial already, and Warwickshire were very keen. Most county cricketers come through the school and representative ranks, but the odd player is found when he writes in and is given a trial, just as the fossicker sometimes finds a gleam when panning for gold.

Giles had represented Surrey at every level from Under-11 to Under-19, as a pace bowler who could swing into right-handers. When he told Surrey he wanted to bowl spin - partly because he could, partly because of back trouble - they did not want to know. They had Keith Medlycott, Neil Kendrick and the Young England left-armer Mark Bainbridge on their books. Giles got a job after leaving school all right - at a service station.

It is not easy to be pessimistic about the future of English cricket. It is very easy. The more things change, and the more money that is thrown at them, the more Test results stay the same. But even if structural reforms never change the safety-first, avoid-failure culture of defensiveness, there is one other way of producing a winning England team, by turning up 11 fine cricketers even if by luck or accident.

Warwickshire were so convinced of their luck that they took 10 minutes to make up their minds when Giles returned belatedly to the Edgbaston indoor nets for his second trial. After watching him for that long from the gallery, Amiss and M J K Smith slipped out, conferred, and called Giles into their office to offer him a two-year contract. "He had a nice, smooth, high action and got bounce," Amiss recalled. "We certainly saw some potential to work with."

Until 1996, Giles hardly played for the first team as Richard Davis was the senior left-armer. Then early that season, at Headingley, in his 14th first-class match, Giles bowled 68.3 overs as Yorkshire scored more than 500. "My fingers were blue by the end," Giles remembers; but his face was not. Even though Darren Gough made a hundred, and hoicked him into the Western Terrace, Giles did not kick the footmarks or let his head drop or beg the support of his colleagues like a whipped puppy, or fire the ball into Gough's legs in self-defence. He just kept concentrating imperturbably on the basics of his action and on taking wickets.

England need a new spinner who can turn the ball away from the bat, and doesn't keep his head below the parapet as his primary instinct, and not just for the one-day internationals.

If rain had not intervened on the last day of the Barbados Test it may still have ended in a draw as England were still far from certain of winning, though the pitch was bouncing and turning. Phil Tufnell took one wicket every 30 overs in the Test series in the West Indies: given that rate, if he had bowled at both ends all day in Barbados, England would have taken three wickets.

Giles took 55 wickets in 1996 and was chosen for the A tour to Australia, where he learnt he had to be fitter - 5 km in 20 minutes is now his routine - and how to pressurise good batsmen on true pitches, but he picked up a knee injury which stopped him getting 50 wickets last summer. Still, Tufnell was the only left-arm spinner to reach that landmark so Giles had no rival for the A tour of Sri Lanka where, far from ducking responsibilty, he was the leading bowler on the turning pitches.

Giles is not yet the mesmeriser that Tufnell was in his few inspired moments, as in the Oval Test last year, when he turned on the looping flight and self-belief, took early wickets and was never given the option of stock-bowling into the rough.

But Giles is aggressive by nature and by Warwickshire nurture, and he has always been a worker, so his father says, and he can bat better than any other England specialist bowler, with a career average of more than 30. A breezy, run-a-ball man in his county's lower order, he learnt how to hang around in long partnerships in the A Tests against Sri Lanka. England's tail must be strengthened: Andy Caddick's promotion to No 8 last winter resulted in 19 runs against West Indies.

When he was seven or eight, and asked whether he wanted to be an engine driver, Giles would always reply: "I'm going to play cricket for England." Whereas Tufnell gave up the game for three years in his teens, Giles played alone in the back garden near Guildford (his brother was 10 years older), hitting a ball with a stump like Don Bradman and pretending he was Ian Botham in the Test matches he played out.

Though English coaching may not have realised that the son is father of the man, most future Test cricketers are marked out from an early age by their almost obsessive desire. The winners, at any rate.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)