The eleven that became ten

Simon Jones bowled seven overs in the 2002 Ashes.

Australia were 67 for none when he had Justin Langer caught behind. Then he chased a ball into the outfield at the Gabba, slid, and caught his studs in the turf.

Two entries

He is on the card twice and neither entry is a performance.

In the bowling table: 7 overs, 0 maidens, 32 runs, 1 wicket. In England’s second innings, at number eleven, where a score should be: absent hurt.

England had bowled first on Nasser Hussain’s decision and were down to three front-line bowlers before lunch on the first morning of a five-Test series.

Full scorecard: Australia v England, 1st Test, Brisbane, 7–10 November 2002 →

What ten men had to do

Bowl Australia out. They did not: Australia made 492, with Matthew Hayden making 197 and Ricky Ponting 123, and Hayden made a second hundred in the second innings.

Andy Caddick, Matthew Hoggard and Ashley Giles bowled 154 overs between them across the match. Craig White bowled 38. Michael Vaughan bowled four.

England batted with ten in the first innings and ten in the second and lost by 384 runs.

The rest of the first day

Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting put on 272 for the second wicket. Langer had gone at 67 to the one wicket Jones took, and the next fell at 339.

At lunch Australia were 125 for one. At tea, 233 for one. At the close, 364 for two.

Three sessions of a five-Test series had gone and England had used three bowlers where they had planned to use four.

The two years afterwards

The knee needed reconstruction. He did not play a Test in 2003, and came back in March 2004 in Jamaica.

He came back and, in 2005, was the fourth seamer in the side that won the Ashes and was for one summer as good as any bowler England had. Then his body failed again and he was finished at twenty-eight, with eighteen Tests.

Why this belongs with selection rather than injury

Because the effect is identical and the record treats them differently.

A man dropped from an eleven leaves a trace: another name in his place, a selector to question, a decision somebody made. A man who is absent hurt leaves a dash, and the side plays on with ten as though ten were the number.

England did not replace him. Under the Laws they could not. The eleven that Hussain chose on the morning of the first Ashes Test lasted about fifty minutes and then became something the scorecard has no way of describing except by leaving a gap.

What is unknowable

Whether it mattered.

England lost that Test by 384 runs and the series 4–1, to a side that was among the strongest ever assembled. A fourth seamer would not obviously have changed either number.

But the decision at the toss is the thing everybody remembers about that morning, and it is judged on what happened to a bowling attack that stopped existing an hour after it was made. Hussain has taken responsibility for the decision, repeatedly and without qualification, and has never once mentioned the injury as mitigation.

The card gives Jones three overs and a dash. Everything else about what those fourteen deliveries cost is inference.

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No. 3 in The Eleven, a series of 5.

NextThe two names that are not there