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36,000 runs and never played a Test - Alan Jones and cricket's cruellest omission

Aakash Saini

Alan Jones [Source: @NoContextCounty, @GlamCricket/x]Alan Jones [Source: @NoContextCounty, @GlamCricket/x]

Cricket, for all its glory and grandeur, has often been a game of heartbreaks just as much as triumphs. For every celebrated name etched in cricket's ever-growing folklore, there exists another whose brilliance was quietly confined within the boundaries of domestic arenas.

One such domestic luminary was Alan Jones, a former Glamorgan and Western Australian cricketer whose prolific feats in England’s County Championship never yielded him a Test cap he so richly deserved.

645 first-class matches, Zero Tests – The strange tale of Alan Jones

When Alan Jones first strode out for Glamorgan in 1957, few could have predicted he would go on to rewrite several first-class record books. Aged 19 at the time, the Glamorgan-born cricketer spent the next 26 domestic seasons with the cricket club, and even played a handful of first-class cricket overseas with Western Australia in Australia and with Natal as well as Northern Transvaal in South Africa.

In a first-class career spanning 26 years, Alan Jones aggregated over 36,000 runs with 56 tons and 194 half-centuries in the process. While his expansive first-class career featured 645 matches, the ultimate honour of representing England in an official Test match remained agonisingly out of reach.

With a first-class haul surpassing even some of the greatest 21st century batters like Sachin Tendulkar, Kumar Sangakkara, Ricky Ponting, Brian Lara, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Rahul Dravid, Alan Jones remains the poignant holder of an undesirable record – that of aggregating the highest number of first-class runs without playing a single Test.

When Alan Jones won a Test cap, and then lost it…

Alan Jones did come close to breaking that barrier once in his career, back in mid-1970 when he was picked in the England team for a five-match series against a Garfield Sobers-led Rest of the World group.

In the first match of the series at Lord's, the left-hander registered five and a duck, and was dismissed by Proteas fast bowler Mike Procter in each innings. However, while the series was initially recognised as Test cricket by the Wisden Cricketer's Almanack, the status was revoked by the ICC, who labelled the series as unofficial Test matches (first-class cricket) instead.

And just like that, Alan Jones became the only man in history to win a Test cap and then lose it, considering all other English players in that line-up had prior Test exposure.

A life devoted to Glamorgan – Finding greatness beyond Test cricket

With 645 first-class matches, 288 List A games and not a single international cap in any format for England, Alan Jones still found purpose, pride and fulfilment in the familiar colours of the Glamorgan Cricket Club.

One of the greatest names in the club's century-old history, the prolific left-handed batter piled up over 1,000 runs in each England County Championship season from 1961 till 1983, i.e., until his retirement year. The perennial underachiever also listed over 1,800 runs in five of six County Championship seasons from 1963 to 1968.

All in all, by the time of his retirement, Alan Jones had 36,049 runs in 1,168 first-class innings spanning 645 matches to show for, doing so at an average of 32.89 in an era when fast bowling was gruesome and cricket helmets were a rarity.

Add to that, the Glamorgan zealot, now aged 87, also scored 7,157 runs in 288 List A games with two centuries and 42 fifties.