Ashes in sight but work ahead

2 September 2005

In the fifth of his exclusive Ashes diaries for ecb.co.uk, Ashley Giles looks back at the fourth npower Test where he hit the winning run to leave England needing only a draw at The Oval to win the series.

The fourth Test was another incredible finish and my innings was the most important innings I've played and probably the most important seven runs I'll ever score.

Usually if someone told you you'd be there at the end you'd be as happy as Larry but it was so tense during the run chase and 130 runs seemed more like 230.

It's all over! England go 2-1 up in the Ashes series

It's generally very tense anyway during a run chase and nobody says much. I was sitting up with Troy Cooley and Duncan Fletcher as the wickets were falling and I just said 'this is terrible'.

It's not as bad when you get out there because you're mind is focused on what you have to do. You're still on edge but not as nervous as the guys back in the dressing room.

I've talked about it a bit since the match finished and I don't really remember the crowd, all I remember is me and Matthew Hoggard out there against Brett Lee and Shane Warne.

Warne has proved tricky for me and I knew he would try to set me up for the quick straight one so I told myself that I wasn't going to sweep.

Gradually we got nearer until we only needed two runs and I thought I'd done it when I saw Warne throw up a full toss. I saw it early and you just think 'game over' but it hit short leg.

Delight at the winning run

Fortunately I got another one to win it and the next day there were some great photos in all the newspapers that I will treasure forever.

There were some great individual performances, in particular Andrew Flintoff who was awesome and Simon Jones with his five-for. It was a fantastic effort in the second innings after losing Jonah and Matthew Hoggard came up trumps.

It's important when you win the toss and bat first to get a big total and the partnership between Andrew Flintoff and Geraint Jones went a long way to us winning the game.

England's batting heroes

Now we go to The Oval needing only a draw to win the Ashes and it's by far and away the biggest match we'll ever be involved in.

We have to try and prepare as normal and keep doing the things we've doing. Obviously there will be times when we'll all be nervous at stages but that's to be expected with what's at stake and we all know what the rewards are.

We've all thought about what it would mean to win the Ashes but we all know there are five days of hard cricket ahead. So much has happened during this series and I'm sure the final Test will be no different.

The support we've received this summer has been fantastic and the nation has gone cricket crazy so I'm sure the support will be just as good again.

We'd all love Simon Jones to play but he's got to be fit and we can't afford for him to be carrying an injury. It would me an amazing achievement if we fielded the same 11 players right throught the series but Jonah has got to be right.