A wonderful ambush, organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board in concert with Hugh Morris, took place in Wales on Wednesday yesterday morning. It was 50 years to the day that Alan Jones walked out to open the batting for England against the Rest of the World. Subsequently, those matches were denied Test status and he was no longer an England player. Now this wrong has been righted, albeit via a Zoom meeting.
Jones received England cap No 696, which was “presented” from a distance by Colin Graves, chairman of the ECB. Tony Lewis, one of his old captains, was on hand, to recall being “victims of Wilf Wooller’s coaching scheme” as a 13-year-old alongside Jones; so, too, was the current England captain, Joe Root, who told him: “Whether it’s one or a hundred caps you are part of something special.” Morris said: “This is a proud moment for all of us in Wales.”
Soon Jones, from his sitting room, confirmed: “the new one fits. It’ll do. I’m waiting for the helmet now” (There were no helmets when Jones was facing up to the great fast bowlers of his era).
Without doubt, he is the most attractive and most prolific opening batsman to have played for Glamorgan. Even those who followed him and managed to wear the three lions of England, such as Morris and Steve James, would never dream of arguing with that. Both were mentored by the soft-spoken, bilingual Jones. He would have been their boyhood hero, the sort of hero who does not disappoint when you meet him. Jones’s smooth strokeplay delivered more than 36,000 first-class runs in 26 seasons from 1957 onwards.
Yet somehow, like that other soft-spoken gentleman of Welsh cricket, Don Shepherd, Jones was never properly capped for England. For decades a trip over the Severn Bridge would involve listening to the anger and bewilderment of Welsh cricket lovers at this flagrant injustice. And they were right. Everyone agreed “they would have played 50 times if their county had been Middlesex or Surrey”. But this pair could only ever play for Glamorgan.
Jones naturally thought he had won an England cap when he was selected to play in that first “Test” against the Rest of the World in a series hastily arranged after the cancellation of South Africa’s 1970 tour. “We all felt they were Tests,” he said. “Garry Sobers said that he would not have played in those games if they were not proper Tests”.
In his solitary outing Jones made 5 and 0, falling to the combination of Farokh Engineer and Mike Procter both times. For the next match Jones was replaced by John Edrich, and he was never called upon again.
Then the ICC decided these matches did not qualify as Tests, even though the quality of the players involved was supreme. The Rest of the World side were captained by Sobers and contained Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards, Clive Lloyd and Rohan Kanhai and the 1971 Wisden refers to them as “The 1970 Test matches”.
Jones is now a sprightly 81 – “I’m the same weight as when I played and I can still get into the blazer I received for that match.” He is one of nine brothers; Eifion, four years younger, was a stout, dependable presence behind the stumps for Glamorgan for more than two decades. Alan was slighter in build, unassuming in demeanour and considerably more graceful at the crease. He was the silkiest of players, with a simple, classical technique, who would cut and drive with the sort of elegance that is so often given only to left-handed batsmen.
I played against him when he had entered his fifth decade and two memories stand out. Even then he was incredibly fleet-footed. Against spinners he would glide down the pitch with imperceptible speed, turning good deliveries into half-volleys before driving them crisply to the boundary. Then, after stumps were drawn there would be the bonus of listening to his gentle, smiling Welsh voice on cricket.
On Wednesday morning, however, he was temporarily lost for words. But he soon recovered. “I was annoyed that I never had another opportunity,” he said, although by now he was beaming brightly.
