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Gilchrist makes Jones' life difficult

SPORTINGLIFE, London
England wicketkeeper Geraint Jones and Australia gloveman Adam Gilchrist have a lot in common.
They both grew up in Queensland and are seen as their respective country's answer to cricket's never-ending search for a world-class wicketkeeper-batsman.
There is no doubting Gilchrist's pedigree but the Lord's Test proved that Jones, who was born in Papua New Guinea and grew up in Toowoomba, 90 minutes drive from Brisbane, still has a lot to learn about the art of wicketkeeping.
He was 22 when he left Australia, kept out of the Queensland team by Wade Seccombe, and was never in his wildest fantasies going to steal Gilchrist's gloves.
"I was very raw (then), and it's only in the last five or six years being involved in cricket full-time that I have really developed," he told the Toowoomba Chronicle newspaper.
"I was just a boy who had come from a country town to Brisbane. I hadn't had any coaching and I imagine there are a lot of people looking now and thinking, 'How on earth is he playing Test cricket?"'
Jones explained the decision to leave Australia and head to the country of his parents' birth, Wales, was in fact not a cricketing one at all.
"It was a life decision. I wasn't doing a lot in Brisbane, I was working a lot for a computer company sending computers out all over Australia and I had the opportunity to come over and play some club cricket," said Jones, who grew up watching Ian Healy rather than Jack Russell.
"But England was the team I wanted to play for," said Jones, whose father has the Welsh dragon tattooed on his bicep but still lives in Brisbane. It was only at the insistence of captain Michael Vaughan and coach Duncan Fletcher that he
was preferred over the more accomplished stumper Chris Read to keep for England.
His poor performance at Lord's, coupled with his Australian heritage, has meant he has become the butt of jokes and ridicule Down Under. Channel Nine's The Footy Show, a programme for Aussie Rules fans, devoted several minutes last Thursday to the top 10 Geraint
Jones jokes. Sample: "What do Geraint Jones and Michael Jackson have in common?
Answer: "They both wear gloves but don't know why."
Former Victorian wicketkeeper Darren Berry labelled the fit of fumbles by Jones at Lord's as some of the worst glovework he has seen in a Test, and warned rival countries against selecting keepers primarily for their batting.
Gilchrist's ability has set a worldwide trend towards searching for batsmen who keep wickets rather than virtuoso glovemen of Berry's ilk. Berry, who toured England as back-up for Healy in 1997, has been a critic of Gilchrist's glovework in the
past.
But this week he pointed out that the Australian's superhuman batting abilities were a luxury not possessed by any other keeper in the world. If Jones is to be England's mini-Gilchrist, he has a long way to go.
"He had a shocker," Berry told the Melbourne Age.
"He couldn't catch a cold beer at the moment.
"It was noticeable that after he dropped that one off (Jason) Gillespie that his head went down, and then that one coming forward that he got two gloves to, a cat could have caught that.
"I couldn't believe it. I was standing there watching with Rodney Hogg and Kim Hughes and at that stage I just turned my back on the game and resumed drinking because that was embarrassing. I thought it affected his batting as well."
Berry still believes Jones should retain his place for the second Test at Edgbaston but said the only wicketkeeping performance that had riled him more was that of India's Parthiv Patel against Australia last year.
"I think now that they have made the decision to go with him, they have to give him another opportunity, but if he had another one like that, he would be under the pump," Berry said.
"Up to the stumps Patel's was the worst display I have seen by a Test keeper, but standing back, which is easier, Jones was as bad as Patel.
"It wasn't just the chances, he dropped a lot of balls that were not chances. He doesn't move his feet down the leg side.
"I was talking to Rod Marsh at Lord's and he believes Chris Read is a much better keeper, but Jones is a better batsman.
"It comes back to the old argument, they are trying to follow the Australian model, but Gilchrist is a freak, a one-off."