The Ashes: Welsh Find Voice

Funny business, nationality. In days of fluid international boundaries we have become accustomed to cricketers shunning their motherland to appear for other countries but there can be no more curious experience than that for a Welshman representing England at cricket. Simon Jones hails from a country where some of its more myopic rugby fans declare, with tongue not always in cheek: "I support two teams: Wales and anyone who is playing England."

Glamorgan's current captain Robert Croft probably averred the most logical solution: "When I play cricket for Glamorgan, I am representing Wales; when I play cricket for England, I am representing the British Lions," he once said.

Jones, strangely, is not as passionate about the oval-ball game as most in the principality but, whichever analogy he is using, it is certainly working. Yesterday he not only recorded his Test best figures of six for 53 - only narrowly more expensive than career best figures of six for 45 for Glamorgan against Derbyshire in 2002 - but also the best in Test cricket by a Glamorgan bowler, beating the six for 118 which his father Jeff took against Australia at Adelaide in 1965-66.

It was as if becoming the first Glamorgan bowler to reach 50 Test wickets on Friday had not been enough for him. In dismissing Michael Clarke he surpassed Croft's 49 and requires only five more Test caps to overtake Croft (21) as Glamorgan's most capped player. Only 16 Glamorgan cricketers have been selected for England - not including the unfortunate Alan Jones whose "Test" against the Rest of the World in 1970 was subsequently devalued - and Simon Jones has probably already established himself as the best of that bunch, notwithstanding Tony Lewis's eight matches as captain in 1972-73 (including a century against India), the excellence of Croft's off-spin abroad and Allan Watkins' batting average of 40.50 in 15 Tests after his debut in 1948.

If Jones continues as he is, Gavin Henson and co may have to watch out when the voting for the BBC Wales sports personality of the year comes round in November.

Jones might also soon find himself playing Test cricket at his home ground of Sophia Gardens if plans revealed by Glamorgan last week reach fruition. They have unveiled a £6m scheme to increase the capacity of the Cardiff ground from its existing 6,000 beyond the 15,000 required by the England and Wales Cricket Board for the staging of Test matches. A new pavilion will be built at the northern end of the ground and the existing one will be demolished to accommodate a new grandstand. In a further quirky part of the proposal Glamorgan will temporarily house the Cardiff Devils ice hockey team in an arena behind the new pavilion until their new rink is completed in three years' time.

As Jones suffered such a horrific knee injury slipping in the outfield at Brisbane in 2002, it is probably best not to attempt the sort of "Bambi on ice" jokes which accompanied some of his efforts in the field early in his career. There was never a problem once the ball was in his hands in the outfield, though; there are few players with a more powerful throwing arm. At Canterbury Jones once hurled a ball which nearly covered the distance of the width of the outfield. It must have been close to 100m.

That Kentish field is, of course, now the home of another so-called Welshman playing for England, Geraint Jones. His father, Emrys, might be a fluent Welsh-speaker but Geraint's peripatetic journey through life, encompassing Kundiawa in Papua New Guinea, Brisbane, Lydney, Clevedon, Abergavenny and Canterbury rather dilutes that Celtic ancestry. One imagines, though, that if Glamorgan had taken up the offer to sign him in the late 1990s, then it might not have been just certain sections of the local media who readily classified him as Welsh.

Clearly there are a number of county grounds which want Test cricket but Glamorgan might just have an edge over prospective rivals, such as the Rose Bowl in Southampton. After all, it is the England and Wales Cricket Board which will decree its suitability. It is a shame that its acronym loses the W so readily but there is considerable Welsh influence within the ECB's corridors of power: the chairman David Morgan, the performance director Hugh Morris and Matthew Maynard, who is joining the staff of the England and former Glamorgan coach Duncan Fletcher.

It has been widely documented that Simon Jones learnt his famed reverse swing at Sophia Gardens but maybe he does not enjoy the often placid pitch there as much as some might think.

Take this entry in the latest edition of the Cricketers' Who's Who. Under the heading "career outside cricket" Jones wrote "Excavator of Sophia Gardens". However, if England are playing a Test there in 2008, he might be singing from a very different hymn sheet.