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Ashley Giles- a profile
By Tom Bason March 31 2006
Ashley Frasier Giles was born on March 19 1973, in Chertsey, Surrey. Giles started his cricketing career as a fast-bowler for Ripley Cricket Club, where his bowling partner was Sussex batsman Ian Ward.
Giles represented Surrey upto to the 2nd XI, until an injury forced him to try bowling spin. Unfortunately, he did not do enough to earn a professional contract with Surrey, and Giles found his way to trials at Warickshire, where he spent 2 seasons in the 2nd XI, before making his debut in the 1st team in 1993. As a tall man for an orthodox spinner, Giles is able to add extra bounce to his bowling. Giles made his test debut against South Africa, the country where he spent the winter months in the mid-90's, at Manchester in 1998. Since then, his place in the side has come under scrutiny, with many on-lookers not thinking he can spin the ball enough, even going so far as dubbing him the 'wheelie-bin'. However, Giles has always kept his place in the side, and has rewarded the selectors with going on to take over 100 test wickets, and score over 1000 runs. Many of Giles best performances have come on the sub-continent, including a delivery to bowl Inzamam ul Haq in Karachi, taking 5-67 in Ahmedabad and taking 18 wickets in the 1999 series in Sri Lanka. This changed however, when he took 9-210 and 9-122 in the first two Tests against West Indies in 2004. After this series, a set of mugs were ordered to celebrate his testimonial printed 'King of Spin'. Unfortunately when they arrived they had the 'King of Spain' printed on them, a nickname now synonymous with Giles. 2005 was an excellent year for Giles, as he was named in Wisdens Cricketer's Amanack was one of the five cricketers of the year, and he played a role in England recapturing the Ashes from Australia's grasp. In the series, Giles managed to get the wickets of each of Australia's top batsmen, and score the winning runs in the fourth Test to give England a 2-1 lead in the series. In December 2005, Giles had a hip operation that ruled him out of the March tour of Pakistan, where spinners Panesar and Udal both came in as replacements, and each had some success.

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