“We felt like Premier League footballers. There was a massive crowd and they had turned away 10,000 people. It was obscene the amount of people who wanted to come and watch.
“It was like, ‘wow this is something to behold’. I don’t think it’ll ever happen again.”
It may be 20 years since arguably the most iconic Test series in Ashes history, but former England bowler Simon Jones can still see every moment in his mind’s eye.
Jones’ 20-20 vision is hardly surprising given the bigger picture: 2005 was England’s first Ashes series win since 1987. It not only ended an 18-year, eight-series losing run but it was an endless cricketing summer that flipped the Ashes narrative.
England teams since that summer have stored that storied series in their psyche somewhere. They enter with a belief that victory is an option again.
Jones’ story mirrors that big-picture narrative.
The 2005 series – relived in a BBC Sport documentary on iPlayer – was the zenith of a career cruelly cut short by injury.
Jones took 18 wickets, including a career-best 6-53 at Trent Bridge, despite, appropriately perhaps, only playing three and a half Tests because of an ankle injury.
Despite that setback, the former Glamorgan fast bowler remembers the summer as a once-in-a-lifetime blur of front and back-page news and Downing Street garden parties.
It all began at a febrile Lord’s that was more stag party than traditional tea party.
The home of cricket is known for its serenity. Popping champagne corks rather than popping off.
But as Jones remembers, 2005 felt different, even before a ball was bowled.
“When we went through that Long Room, and we walked down the stairs and through the pavilion, it erupted,” he says.
“I remember Kev [Kevin Pietersen] turning around and saying to me: ‘What is going on here?’
“It almost shocked us really. Normally it is all the members and they are a bit subdued. A bit staid. A bit posh.
“But people were saying ‘take these down’ and we were all like, ‘OK, here we go’.”
