Mixed Fortunes for the Joneses, Geraint and Simon

Back in May an entry was penned in the Lord's scorebook during the first Test against New Zealand: Styris c G Jones b S Jones 0. It went unnoticed at the time but research suggested it was one of those cricketing curios that leaves the stattos in a state of bliss.

Never before in Test history had a batsman been dismissed by two players who shared a surname but not a bloodline. Then, the Joneses had little trouble keeping up with each other. Now one of them is in danger of falling behind.

While Geraint was busy yesterday renewing his profitable partnership with Andrew Flintoff - like Batman and Robin but with helmets for masks - Simon watched quietly from the Edgbaston pavilion. In the space of 24 hours he had been dropped by England in favour of James Anderson, then snubbed by his county Glamorgan, whose coach John Derrick was concerned that his inclusion in the team for the championship match against Hampshire would cause "unrest and dissension in the dressing room". That evening a Jones-less Glamorgan reduced Hampshire to 16 for three, and Derrick's decision looked like sound business sense.

The fluctuating fortunes of the Jones boys are a reminder of the ruthlessness that now informs Michael Vaughan's England. What was not so clear was that the same process is going on in Wales too. On Thursday there was talk of Simon seeking a new county in a bid to get regular first-team cricket. Happily for Geraint, county cricket has become that thing he does in between representing England.

Geraint turned 28 this month and describes himself as a late developer, but if he continues to develop the repertoire he showed off with the bat yesterday we could be in for a treat. For the fourth time in five Tests, he added crucial, attractive runs with the hulking Flintoff to reinforce the view that England have discovered their best pair of counter-attacking Nos 6 and 7 since the days of Tony Greig and Alan Knott. On a morning when West Indies plumbed the depths they touched on the first day at Lord's, any allusion to sixes and sevens felt rather appropriate.

Not everyone is convinced by Geraint's prowess with those lurid tangerine gloves, and in his two Tests at Lord's he has leaked an unKnott-like total of 48 byes. But for the time being his cuts and drives are making up for the fluffs and fumbles. Yesterday's chirpy 74 off only 97 balls took his Test aggregate to 321 runs at 45.86 - early days yet, but still six points clear of Alec Stewart, the keeper-batsman they said was irreplaceable.

But it is his unlikely alliance with Flintoff - half a foot taller, a few stone heavier - that has really caught the eye. Like all good symbiotic relationships, the pair feed off each other. Flintoff likes to plant his size 12s and swat down the ground or over midwicket; Jones prefers the back-foot, cross-batted strokes through the off side. The result of this mix and match is that the bowlers constantly need to adjust their lengths. Yesterday, as the pair joined forces in their most thrilling stand yet - 170 runs from 190 balls - West Indies were more in need of adjusting their radar.

One Jones uppercut for four off Corey Collymore in the second over of the morning prompted Brian Lara to run all the way from first slip for bleary-eyed crisis talks. Three overs later he pummelled successive deliveries from Jermaine Lawson through the covers and soon after that reached his half-century from 62 balls, which was 21 fewer than his partner required. By that stage, Lara had given up on the crisis talks altogether.

Flintoff has described Jones as a "natural talent", which is a bit like William Shakespeare describing one of his contemporaries as being handy with the quill. But where Flintoff has become a man of the people, Jones remains the shy country boy, gently recalling the home on stilts and the fresh mangoes of an early childhood spent in Papua New Guinea. He is happy to linger backstage as Flintoff brings the house down. Yet the two get on fabulously.

Simon Jones is even closer to Flintoff, a relationship that stems in part from the day the fast bowler made his Test debut against India at Lord's two summers ago and was bear-hugged to near-oblivion for each of his four wickets. He could do with an arm round the shoulder now.

Jones is only 25, but already his career has been an unsettling mixture of raw pace, sickening injuries and even a hint of tabloid fodder, with Jones insisting in a newspaper article recently that reaction to pictures of him talking to the model Jodie Kidd were "blown out of all proportion". Now, not long after being touted as part of England's dream pace-bowling attack - along with Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard and Flintoff - he is on the sidelines because of the management's decision that Edgbaston was more suited to the conventional swing of Anderson than it was to the reverse swing of Jones.

It is way too early, of course, to talk of his England career in the past tense, and the way Anderson began his comeback yesterday with four fruitless overs for 18 suggests that all is far from lost.