Geraint Jones on The Ashes, abuse from Australian fans and THAT catch in 2005

In his interview with Tom Clee Jones spoke about touring, the pressure and the fun of an Ashes Series

On when preparation started for the Ashes in 2005:

“Looking back, it was definitely towards the end of the previous summer. We had an undefeated summer where we won all seven Test matches.

“We knew we were building incredible momentum and then we went to South Africa over the winter and won that Test series.

“So all that leading up definitely started to bring it right into our minds that we could do something special against the Aussies.

“We had some really easy Test matches against Bangladesh but we were still winning them and playing great cricket.

“So it was definitely a good 12 months beforehand that we were going in the right direction and we knew as a team that, with the Ashes coming up, we were doing some good things that were giving us huge confidence.”

On trying to peak in time for the series:

“I think in sport, especially cricket, it’s not like swimming, where Olympic athletes taper towards a specific event.

“Cricket being a sport over five days, you’ve just got to give it your all for that.

“Because at international level you are playing so regularly and always in the gym preparing, I felt I was always in a heightened state of getting ready as the next series was never far away and the next Test match was just around the corner.

“It is a busy lifestyle and you have to find ways to switch off. But, ultimately, I think you have always got your mind on the next challenge, definitely.”

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On THAT catch at Edgbaston in 2005:

“With a series that you know is going to be so close and so hard-fought, little things will make the difference.

“Looking back at that Edgbaston Test, we were in such a strong position to win and before the fight back that Brett Lee and Shane Warne started off on the final morning.

“We were very aware that something small could turn it.

“Even before my catch, you look back at the way that Shane Warne got out by kicking his stumps over. It was such a bizarre dismissal, and we weren’t looking like getting them out until we did that.

“And me taking that catch with two runs to win, it was a sense of relief as much as anything.

“Knowing that that was a huge moment to level the series, because if we hadn’t have done that the series was gone.

“But that got us back into it. That belief we had kept us in it and we knew then that the series was up for grabs.”

On how to deal with the pressure of Ashes cricket:

“You compartmentalise it. You turn everything into small little events and don’t think about what is at stake with that ball.

“With me being wicketkeeper, every ball I just made sure that was my focus, just the ball coming down and not the fact that, if one went past me or I missed it, how important that was.

“Because if you’ve got that in your mind before the event has started then you are making life doubly hard for yourself.

“You’ve got to want the ball to come to you. That as much as anything, with that last catch, I pretty much knew a big event was coming my way and that helped me focus.

“I kept telling myself: ‘There will be one more opportunity and more than likely it’s going to come my way. Let’s be ready for it.”

On what it’s like to tour Australia:

“As much as anything, you get the feeling that the whole country is against you. You know it from the minute you get there.

“If you get a cricket fan at passport control then there’s a good chance you’ll have a comment made to you.

“There will be Ashes stuff everywhere. I remember in 06/07 when we went there, there were things on buses, on billboards. Every time a boundary was hit, up flashed an advert on the big screen.

“As much as the pressure on the game, the outside pressure from the Aussie community against you was there as well.

“They have time to build up for it. There’s time in between Test matches over there.

“The Aussie nation has a load of time to build up for this Ashes whereas the actual players are moving from place to place and playing loads of cricket.

“But in general the watching public would have been building up to these Ashes since they last saw their home team play. That’s a long time and they are very good at getting behind their team.

On how to deal with bating from the public:

“The pressure when you go to Australia is massive.

“You definitely have to find ways of dealing with that, and my way was laughing at it, just seeing it for what it was, a bit of tongue-in-cheek stuff, and trying as much as you can to not let that get to you.

“Especially with the results that have happened over the last few years. You always get their players coming out with big statements like what’s happened recently.”

On the benefit of having grown up in Australia:

“I was familiar with Brisbane where the first Test match was. In the lead-up to that I was lucky I had family there that I could visit and see.

“Pretty much most of the guys there would have been to some part of Australia as a youngster going over there to play club cricket.

“So that’s the difference nowadays that cricket is a global game and all the guys involved will know people out there and will have an affection with different parts of the country.

“You’ve just got to enjoy that. No matter where I went on tour, I really tried to immerse myself in the culture and enjoy that as much as you can.

“It’s a bit harder in Australia with an Ashes series on because there’s so much publicity around it. You probably get a bit more attention walking down the street than you do on other tours.

“But a lot of it is good-natured and you’ve just got to see it for the passion that it is and enjoy it as much as anything.

“In a match situation you know you are going to get a bit of stick but socially I found it absolutely fine.”

On the hostile atmosphere in the grounds:

“They are massive stadiums. They are all big stadiums now so the numbers there, there’s lots of people. Every event you know about because of the noise that comes out.

“Thankfully for me, being in the middle, I couldn’t actually hear a lot compared to guys fielding on the boundary. That was one thing, I was probably sheltered quite a bit from it being a keeper in the middle of the ground all the time.

“I could tell when the whole crowd was up but as to the chat that bowlers get when they’re down at fine leg, I missed out on that unfortunately.

“But you know there’s no point in trying to go up against 10,000 people in the crowd near you.

“Your best option is to show that you’ve got a personality and you’re out there enjoying it, playing a game you love, and you just happen to be in the Ashes which has the biggest rivalry.

“If you go the other way and make it known that you are not happy with what’s going on, then it will just make it worse.

“I think now, guys are aware that it is going to happen. You’ve just got to enjoy it and make fun of it.

“You might as well see it for what it is, hopefully a bit of fun and a bit of banter. I love seeing that. Now, as a fan, seeing a fielder interact with the crowd, I love it.

“You can’t be on it for six hours a day. You have to switch off and relax as a player, and have a bit of enjoyment down on the boundary.

“Because that is what I would want to see as a fan down there, seeing a player show his personality and engage with the crowd.”

On what the Aussies are like at sledging:

“I think they’re probably the most persistent, and as a whole group they do it together.

“The English wit in terms of sledging is up there, but the Aussies are a bit more blunt with what they say to you,

“The Aussies at home in an Ashes series is a different level.

“Playing in Australia, you know that you are going to hear them pretty much every ball, and pretty loudly.

“When you’re a batter, you’ve got your partner at the other end but it’s you against 11, really.

“You know when you’re on strike it’s your turn to get it.”

On the difference in atmosphere between the teams in 2005 and 2006/07:

“2005 was an incredible series for the matches and also the way the two teams were together. It was an incredible contest and both teams were very respectful of that contest.

“They were concentrating all their mental energy on their skills.

“When we got out to Australia in 06/07, there was a big difference in the atmosphere between the two teams.

“They’d had the best part of 10 months to prepare for that first Test match. They’d had camps and, as a team, decided that they weren’t going to be as friendly and good-natured as they were in 2005.

“Because that was the way that they had been successful in the previous 10 years as a group by being aggressive and putting the opposition under pressure, and they really ramped that up in 2006/07.

“They made a point of not making the cricket game comfortable, and they did that very well.”

On the main culprits for getting in your ear:

“In cricket you’ve got the slips, the keeper, the short leg, so mainly the guys behind the wicket, close to you.

“But they made a collective decision to all get involved so I was very aware of that.

“It wasn’t just the same sort of voices, it was all the voices coming at you. It was just relentless.

On the sort of thing that gets said out in the middle:

“I remember Graeme Smith called me Peter Schmeichel for pretty much the entire tour of South Africa, because he thought I’d be a better goalkeeper than wicketkeeper because of the amount of times I pushed the ball round the corner when I was trying to stop it.

“But I just laughed at it. Stuff like that, I didn’t find it particularly hurtful. I just laughed at it because that was my nature and my way of dealing with it.

“It drove me on to try and catch the ball to prove him wrong. But at the same time, I chuckled about it when he did call it me. I was fine with that sort of stuff.

“A lot of it is about form, so obviously questioning your position in the team, your spot in the team.

“I think that’s what people probably don’t realise. The chat you get in the middle of an international is never particularly personal. It is just aimed at getting you to question your position and your shots. That’s the biggest difference.

“It was more to put you off your train of thought and get you thinking ‘Will I be playing in the next Test match? I need some runs. They’re probably right, I need a good score here’ and then, before you know it, you’ve chased a ball that you would have left if you were feeling a bit more relaxed.

“So it was all aimed at that, to get you to play outside of your game that would be successful. It was never particularly personal, it was more the mental side of it to get you away from what you would do naturally.

“And, of course, if you went from one Test match to the other where you hadn’t contributed much, they would let you know that you were lucky to still be in that side and that, unless you get any runs in this Test match, you won’t be playing the next. Stuff like that.

“But I just laughed at it because that was my nature and my way of dealing with it. I tried to use it to focus me and think: ‘I’m going to stick two fingers up to these guys and show everybody that I do deserve my spot’.

“So I tried to slip it round and not let them achieve what they were trying to and instead get me thinking about the way forward.

“Certainly in 2006/07 I was doing that enough myself, let alone worry about what the opposition were saying.

“For me that’s the biggest difference that I see from club to professional level. When people do chat to you in the middle at professional lever it’s about your technique, where the team is at score-wise, it’s never personal.

“People see Jimmy Anderson chuntering away on TV. He’s not personally degrading them, what he’s aiming at is to get them to play a shot that they don’t want to through their thought process.”

On the players the opposition target:

“They will potentially target new players because they see that they are under pressure. That’s an obvious place to start, a new person into the side.

“A new player in a team is automatically under pressure to score because of the expectation. They have been brought in because somebody has been potentially dropped, so that will be mentioned.

“That the guy they are replacing is a better player than them. ‘You better score some runs otherwise you’ll be out the side’. Stuff like that.

“The older, experienced guys would have played each other a few times so they would have worked out there’s no point chatting to Cook, as it doesn’t affect him one bit.

“That’s the nature of sport, it’s the way it is. In international sport, there are small margins. And if you can look at that small margin and see this is a side that have got some inexperience and you can exploit that inexperience then you are going to give your team an advantage.

“Opposition definitely look at that and think, ‘how can we turn this to our advantage?’”

On the importance of sticking up for each other:

“You’d hope that they would do that as a team.

“Freddie and Harmy were big team men and the reason they did it was because they wanted to protect their team and that was their personality.

“You’d hope that the current team is the same, and that they will stand up for each other. That’s what we were so good at and that’s what we became known for in 2005.

“We stood up for each other in those situations. It’s not something that you particularly talk about but you see it happen and that binds a team together.”

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On whether or not he used to get his own back:

“I wasn’t a big chatter to the opposition, I felt my role was for my team.

“We had individuals who would take on the battle with the opposition one-on-one whereas I felt my role was to the whole team.

“I was sort of the leader of the fielding team and that’s where I put myself. I would make myself vocal in that way.

“I was never one to particularly single someone out and have a bit of a ding-dong with opposition. That’s not to say I never did, but generally it was more of a team focus for me.”

On the importance of getting off to a good start:

“When things aren’t going well as a group, especially on a tour like that, it is hard.

“In a match you’d give it your absolute best but when things weren’t going well you could see people get deflated by results. When that’s continuous it is hard.

“As much as you try, when the opposition is right on top of you like that, it takes small little things for them to get huge amounts of confidence and small little things for the team to be knocked in confidence.

“Each Test match we gave it our absolute all but you definitely feel the momentum is with the opposition and if they keep that momentum up then it is hard work, for sure.”

On the role Australia media play in stirring things up:

“That’s the media’s job, isn’t it? As much as anything, they’re the worst for creating the cracks and opening up those cracks because that is what they want.

“They don’t particularly want harmony and to hear that everything is rosy because otherwise it’s dull.

“Whereas if they know that certain little things are happening or somebody is under pressure then that fills inches and allows people to chat and starts conversation and gives them moments to talk about.

“If everybody is flying and things are going amazingly then it’s not ideal.

“The more turmoil that happens, you definitely know that the media are loving that because it gives them stuff to talk about.

“You try and ignore it but you can’t.

In an Ashes series especially, you still want to chill out and read the paper and watch TV. As much as you try and ignore it, it’s virtually impossible to not be aware if you are the individual being targeted.

“You are definitely aware of the interest that the media has in the team.”

On how to beat cabin fever:

“You have to find way to switch off.

“Get out. Get out all the time. Rarely did I have room service. It was tough at times, definitely, but like I said, you have to immerse yourself in the culture.

“Somewhere like Australia you can get out. The different cities offer so much.

“I made a real effort to not get in the routine of room service and get out and about.

“When there’s 20-odd of you including support staff, there’s always going to be somebody you can go out for a meal with. In terms of getting out of my room, I did it as much as I could.”

On THAT first delivery to second slip by Steve Harmison:

“It wasn’t ideal because we’d spoken about the way we were going to start the match. That was the decision behind Harmy having the first ball.

“But that one ball didn’t have too much of an impact. You can’t blame that one ball on losing the series because that just wasn’t the case.

“But that’s sport, isn’t it? When you look back at sport people remember that first ball.

“I think I remember, growing up, Michael Slater hitting the first ball of an Ashes series for four with a big cut and that is something that sticks with you.

“But that’s the nature of sport. A moment like that, people remember and reflect on.”

On the hardest things about Australia conditions:

“The bounce, the wickets. You get to the Gabba and it’s a bouncy track.

“You’ve got to be aware that you’ll be tested more on the back foot so with that bounce.

“You potentially don’t charge onto the front foot as much and you have to be careful of driving and make sure that it’s right under you.”