'We felt like Premier League footballers' - Jones relives 2005 Ashes

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4 days ago

"We felt like Premier League footballers. There was a massive crowd and they had turned away 10,000 people. It was obscene the amount of people who wanted to come and watch.
"It was like, 'wow this is something to behold'. I don't think it'll ever happen again."
It may be 20 years since arguably the most iconic Test series in Ashes history, but former England bowler Simon Jones can still see every moment in his mind's eye.
Jones' 20-20 vision is hardly surprising given the bigger picture: 2005 was England's first Ashes series win since 1987. It not only ended an 18-year, eight-series losing run but it was an endless cricketing summer that flipped the Ashes narrative.
England teams since that summer have stored that storied series in their psyche somewhere. They enter with a belief that victory is an option again.
Jones' story mirrors that big-picture narrative.
The 2005 series – relived in a BBC Sport documentary on iPlayer – was the zenith of a career cruelly cut short by injury.
Jones took 18 wickets, including a career-best 6-53 at Trent Bridge, despite, appropriately perhaps, only playing three and a half Tests because of an ankle injury.
Despite that setback, the former Glamorgan fast bowler remembers the summer as a once-in-a-lifetime blur of front and back-page news and Downing Street garden parties.
It all began at a febrile Lord's that was more stag party than traditional tea party.
The home of cricket is known for its serenity. Popping champagne corks rather than popping off.
But as Jones remembers, 2005 felt different, even before a ball was bowled.
"When we went through that Long Room, and we walked down the stairs and through the pavilion, it erupted," he says.
"I remember Kev [Kevin Pietersen] turning around and saying to me: 'What is going on here?'
"It almost shocked us really. Normally it is all the members and they are a bit subdued. A bit staid. A bit posh.
"But people were saying 'take these down' and we were all like, 'OK, here we go'."
Listen - Simon Jones: The 2005 Ashes and me
England rocked the Aussies early on - literally and figuratively. Ricky Ponting was hit in the grille in a first innings during which they were dismissed for 190 - but a Glenn McGrath-inspired Australia went on to win that Test comfortably by 239 runs.
"When Steve Harmison hit Ponting, which never happens by the way, nobody went to check on him," Jones says.
"The Australians said this was a different team, like a pack of wolves coming in for the kill.
"And it was. We wanted to take them down."
If 2005 was one of the most iconic series of all times, the second Test at Edgbaston has gone down as one of the best individual matches of any series.
Andrew Flintoff was at his imperious best with bat - making 68 and 73 - and ball, claiming seven wickets including an iconic second-innings over during which he dismissed Justin Langer and Ponting.
His act of sportsmanship - commiserating with Australia batter Brett Lee when England had scraped to a two-run victory, after Harmison dismissed Michael Kasprowicz - is an image that is etched into Ashes history.
Etched into Jones' memory is how Harmison's final wicket saved him from "getting his P45" having feared he'd "dropped the Ashes" when he spilled Kasprowicz on the boundary earlier in the day.
Jones' days in the sun were to come in the third and fourth Tests. England was in full Ashes fever by the third Test at Old Trafford - Jones' tale about 10,000 fans being turned away refers to the final day at Manchester.
If 2005 was the zenith of Jones' career overall, his second-innings dismissal of Michael Clarke was the crowning moment.
Clarke looked well set on 39 until Jones, having lured the Australian with outswingers on repeat, delivered the perfect inswinger.
It's a delivery that has gone down in folklore - both for the iconic sound of off stump being upended, but also for the stump mic recording of Clarke's painful "oh no" realisation there was nothing he could do to reverse-engineer Jones' perfect reverse-swing ruse.
England didn't win that Old Trafford Test but Clarke's dismissal, and a backs-to-the-wall Australia being forced to bat out for a draw, illustrated a turning of the tide. "It sounds like music," Jones says of the Clarke delivery.
"It's the best noise in cricket. People want the noise that stump made as their ringtone and stuff. I love the fact that people are still playing it now. It's a long time. But people still think it's one of the best balls that has ever been bowled, so it's a really proud moment."
England and Jones' 2005 stories have a lot of common ground.
But there is one key, painful error where they diverge.
While England have used that series as the springboard to write a number of famous Ashes victory stories in the 20 years since, for Jones it was a full stop.
The Glamorgan fast bowler was injured in the fourth Test at Trent Bridge and never played for his country again.
It's a fact that could leave Jones bitter - but it is quite the opposite.
There is a touch of the Tennyson - "tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" - to Jones when asked if he'd have given up that endless 2005 Ashes summer for a more elongated Test career.
"At the time, I didn't realise that would be my last Test for England," said Jones, who played 18 Tests for England.
"It was like going from the penthouse to the outhouse.
"I had the best summer of my life in an England shirt and then to never play again… but I'm a big believer in what will be, will be. It's better to have experienced it. Would you rather play 100 Tests and not have 2005, or would you rather play the 18 you played and have 2005?
"It would be the 18 Tests with 2005 included every day of the week.
"It didn't get better than that."
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