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How good is Simon Jones

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
What smithy would describe as "spamming"
Admitting to spamming now are we?

If you want to post rubbish in OT, by all means go for your life, but I won't sit here and let you post rubbish in CC just so you can take another trip to the milestones thread without having a whinge.
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
TBH, I think we just don't know because, unfortunately he has been injured so often. Has great potential and his ability to swing the ball is great. Although we'll see how much he swings it now the XXX mints have been banned formt he change rooms!!!
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
This is quite possibly a question we'll never be able to answer with any certainty. There's no doubting his talent ability to bowl well, but due to his injuries, just how good his career could/would have been will never really be known I fear. All good test bowlers are capable of perfoming exceptionally, but the difference between just being a good bowler and being in the top echelon of bowlers in your time is consistency. Jones proved against best team in the world that he has what it takes as a bowler, but it must be taken into context. It was still only one series - one series in a career that has been fairly poor excluding it. It was also at home in helpful conditions for his bowling, and it was also as part of a performing, effective attack to back him up with the team on a role.

He has the ability to bowl brilliantly, no doubt. But so do lots of bowlers. Doubts over his consistency, his ability away from home and how he'd fare in a weaker attack or in poor conditions for his bowling will never be removed unless he can string together a year or two or consistent performances without falling injured - something I'm not sure he can do. Even if he does come back from his latest injury, there's no certainty that he will ever fully reach the standard he set himself - and there's no real way of knowing what his career would have been like without his injuries.

That's the grand scheme of his career though in comparison to other bowlers. In terms of his selection, there's no doubt in my mind he should be in the England side if he's completely fit and shows any signs of form early in the county season.
Fairly poor is a pretty harsh assessment tbh. An average of 31 isn't all that bad...
 

Gloucefan

U19 Vice-Captain
It's fairly poor IMO. Not disgraceful or anything, but not good either, and certainly nothing to suggest he's as good as that series showed. Injuries have always hit him at the most unfortunate times which is really a shame - I don't think we'll ever really know for sure how good a bowler he is/was/could have been.
You could say 31 is poor and it is especially by international standards. However going back to the recurrent theme in this thread, you can't bring your average down when you're injured. I'm optimistic that had Simon Jones not had half the injuries he has had he would bowled well enough and become a good enough bowler to average a few 1's below 30. It's pure conjecture I know but not an outrageous claim.

Also it's hard to really talk about a career average when he's really only played enough matches to make him a relative 'beginner', or whatever a better word is, in any form of the game.

Edit

I see, his county average is 31. Same argument applies for me. It isn't inexcusable after 75 matches, not really enough to cancel out poor stats that many players get when they first make their counties first 11.
 
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SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Frankly, I cant believe that this England side can afford to leave out someone like Simon Jones.
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
It's fairly poor IMO. Not disgraceful or anything, but not good either, and certainly nothing to suggest he's as good as that series showed. Injuries have always hit him at the most unfortunate times which is really a shame - I don't think we'll ever really know for sure how good a bowler he is/was/could have been.
Interested by your definition of poor?

This would be fairly poor in my book... (the filtered part)

To me, this is a poor average

A bowling average of 31 in Test cricket is average in my book. Not great, but not bad enough to be called poor. Purely subjective I guess, though
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
You could say 31 is poor and it is especially by international standards. However going back to the recurrent theme in this thread, you can't bring your average down when you're injured. I'm optimistic that had Simon Jones not had half the injuries he has had he would bowled well enough and become a good enough bowler to average a few 1's below 30. It's pure conjecture I know but not an outrageous claim.

Also it's hard to really talk about a career average when he's really only played enough matches to make him a relative 'beginner', or whatever a better word is, in any form of the game.

Edit

I see, his county average is 31. Same argument applies for me. It isn't inexcusable after 75 matches, not really enough to cancel out poor stats that many players get when they first make their counties first 11.
No it's not an outrageous claim, but we can guess and predict all we like - we don't truly know good Simon Jones is/was/could-have-been and we might never know. Even if he comes back from injury, he may not be the same player - and to speculate what someone might have been is a totally different matter to evaluating what they were.

So how good is Simon Jones? Well, he's a potential-packed, yet mostly unproven player who has played a handful of good games, most of which coming in his last few outings. So he's decent. He probably would have been better than that if he wasn't injured at the wrong times throughout his career, as he has been - but exactly how much better is not something we can say with any certainty or even back up with anything other than a gut feeling. Hopefully he can come back from his latest injury as good as ever, proving himself in all conditions and leading the England attack for the next 5 years or more, but if he doesn't, his career will always be looked upon as a "what could have been" rather than a "what was" - rightly or wrongly.
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
Interested by your definition of poor?

This would be fairly poor in my book... (the filtered part)

To me, this is a poor average

A bowling average of 31 in Test cricket is average in my book. Not great, but not bad enough to be called poor. Purely subjective I guess, though
I meant fairly poor in the context of the bowlers Jones is usually compared with, and the Ashes series I was discussing. A bowling average in test cricket of 30 is average, but rarely is Jones made out to be an average cricketer, for good reason. Whether he under-achieved in the early part of his test career and improved out of sight in that Ashes series - or it was simply a one-off occurrence where everything worked for him - is something that we may never know, due to his ongoing injury battles, and that was the point I was trying to make.
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
I meant fairly poor in the context of the bowlers Jones is usually compared with, and the Ashes series I was discussing. A bowling average in test cricket of 30 is average, but rarely is Jones made out to be an average cricketer, for good reason. Whether he under-achieved in the early part of his test career and improved out of sight in that Ashes series - or it was simply a one-off occurrence where everything worked for him - is something that we may never know, due to his ongoing injury battles, and that was the point I was trying to make.
Okay, that's fair enough
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
I meant fairly poor in the context of the bowlers Jones is usually compared with, and the Ashes series I was discussing. A bowling average in test cricket of 30 is average, but rarely is Jones made out to be an average cricketer, for good reason. Whether he under-achieved in the early part of his test career and improved out of sight in that Ashes series - or it was simply a one-off occurrence where everything worked for him - is something that we may never know, due to his ongoing injury battles, and that was the point I was trying to make.
TBH, I'm certain about the middle of those 3 and thought even before I found he'd miss the Pakistan tour that the last might also be true.
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
TBH it's pretty harsh you saying that Lewis and Anderson are at pretty much the same level as Mahmood and Plunkett. Lewis and Anderson are pretty good bowlers IMO especially in OD cricket.
I might be reading too much into this but I resent that slightly. Lewis is a vastly more skillful bowler than the likes of Plunkett, Mahmood etc. He's been consistently one of the best bowlers in England for many years and doesn't deserve to be put into that category.

Edit

First class stats last season

Lewis 11 matches 48 wickets at 22.70 econ 3.38 sr 40.2.
I mentioned Anderson & Lewis because (along with Plunkers & Saj) those are the four seamers we've tried since Jones the Swerve was injured. They may be better than Plunkett or Mahmood but I'd still take Jonah (when fully fit) ahead of either in tests.
 

tooextracool

International Coach
Now he had two exeptional games during the 2005 Ashes. But I think since then people have been expecting him to come back and perform. Just wondered what you guys thought. I think hes a really good bowler ,but I get the feeling that people have overrated him slightly , looking for a saviour for Englands poor bowling.
Simon Jones maybe overrated at the moment, but there is no doubt in my mind that he was extremely underrated before the Ashes and that his performances in the Ashes could never be overrated because they were in a different league all together.
 

tooextracool

International Coach
If there's one thing he's not it's accurate. He never has been. He was impossibly dangerous in those 2 Tests Bob mentions because of the amount of swing he could generate.

In answer, I never thought much of Jones until those 2 Tests in 2005 (or more accurately 2 innings, since he did nothing in the second-innings at Old Trafford and was injured after 4 overs at Trent Bridge). So I just wait to see whether those were flashes in the pan or a pointer to further development.
Richard do you even watch cricket? To look at scorecards to decide whether he actually bowled well or not is ludicrous. Despite taking 2/69 at Edgbaston he was quite brilliant for the large part and the quality of his bowling wasnt reflected in his bowling figures.

Further more, Simon Jones, has always possessed an excellent control of the old ball and had you actually paid closer attention to those games, you would have noticed that almost always he had a very poor new ball spell before he came back and was right on the button with the old ball. He has a problem controlling the new ball, and its something that he has gone on to mention himself in interviews.
 

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