YB40 title would top Ashes - Jones

Fast bowler Simon Jones says winning the YB40 with Glamorgan would be bigger than lifting the Ashes with England.

Glamorgan reached the final at Lord's, where they will play Somerset or Nottinghamshire on 21 September, with a 31-run win at Hampshire on Saturday.

Jones was part of the 2005 England side that reclaimed the Ashes from Australia for the first time since 1987.

"It's bigger because [when] you look at an England team, it's the cream of the crop," he said.

2012: Hampshire beat Warwickshire (lost fewer wickets, pictured) 2011: Surrey beat Somerset by five wickets 2010: Warwickshire beat Somerset by three wickets

The tournament was known as the CB40 from 2010-2012, but is now known as the YB40

"Just to work with these [Glamorgan] boys - just to see how hard they've worked to get here - it's a special feeling.

"For us to be at a Lord's final, no-one would have said that at the start of the year.

"We believed in ourselves and rightly so, because we know the talent we have in our squad, but I'm gobsmacked."

Jones is in his second spell with Glamorgan and is waiting to see if he is offered a contract extension as his current two-year deal will expire at the end of this season, but a Lord's final could provide a fitting end to his spell with Glamorgan if no agreement is reached.

But the pace bowler is full of confidence after their semi-final performance at the Ageas Bowl against former club Hampshire, for whom he played from 2009-11.

"We've always come close but we've never had that killer instinct just to finish people off," said the 34-year-old.

"To beat Hampshire by 31 runs, the holders, is an unbelievable feeling and it's something we can take into the final, and I think people will really respect us now.

"It's tough [on Hampshire]. I had some good times here but I'm a Welsh boy through and through and to come back and beat these boys is special.

"They're a serious outfit; they've got a real good team. They're very organised and to for us to beat them like we did, being underdogs... we smashed them."

The Welsh county have not won any silverware since 2004, when Robert Croft captained Glamorgan to the one-day league title, and it will be their first Lord's final for 13 years.

County Championship: 1948, 1969, 1997 Sunday / National League: 1993, 2002, 2004 Now Jones can look forward to playing at Lord's for the first time with the county where he began his senior career.

"I've played there a few times with England but never with Glamorgan. One of the things I've always wanted to do is represent Glamorgan at a final and I can't wait," he added.

"Yes, it's a very big stage but we've got to the final on merit, we've done things right - bowled well as a group, batted well as a group - it's an outstanding feeling because as a unit we're so tight.

"It's just a credit to everyone how hard we've worked and it's just nice to be there because we all deserve it.

"I'm just so pleased for Matthew Mott [the head of elite performance who will leave Glamorgan at the end of this season]. He's had a three-, four-year plan coming into this and it's about time someone gave him some praise.

"Things are looking up now. We came close in the T20. We haven't quite performed in the four-day stuff, but that's what it is."

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Ashes 2013: 'Splashgate' is just not cricket - or at least not as we would like to recognise it

Visions of Gazza having some heinous cocktail of spirits squirted down his throat in a Hong Kong ‘dentist’s chair’ squared in sudden symmetry with our cricketers’ puerile prank.

Acts of crass delinquency, if we care to be reminded of rugby players being caught up in dwarf-tossing in a Queenstown backpackers’ bar, are increasingly infecting our gentlemen sports.

To judge by the supposed apology for Sunday night’s incident, dismissed by Swann as a “call of nature”, the England and Wales Cricket Board is also mirroring football’s capacity for insipid PR-speak. “As a team we pride ourselves on respecting all things cricket,” the statement read.

Well, besides not respecting the opposition, the pitch, the over rate, or the concept of a batsman walking when he is out, what precisely do this side respect? It is difficult to conceive an action more inherently disrespectful than one where, after a compelling final day’s action, the winners then decide to relieve themselves on the very same patch of grass.

In cricket, just as in rugby, the apologists will always advance the tiresome ‘boys will be boys’ defence. The wisdom prevails that as soon as stumps are drawn, the lads are free to engage in whatever outlandish form of hedonism floats their boat.

Thus do the tales of Ian Botham holding court at the Taj in Mumbai, forcing colleagues to neck king-size shots while quoting passages from the Gideon Bible, or that of David Boon drinking 52 ‘tinnies’ on the flight from Sydney to London in 1989 serve to enrich those players’ mystique.

Both Botham and Boon, admittedly, tend to pass that popular litmus test of ‘guys I wouldn’t mind sharing a pint with’. Urinating on the field of play, however, is the type of low-rent misdemeanour for which even footballers – especially footballers – would rightly be pilloried.

Stuart Broad, England’s unlikely enfant terrible of this Ashes series, naturally refused to comment on the issue on Wednesday. He merely spoke vapidly of “the end of the matter”, denying he had seen any newspaper headlines on a story that had colonised the agenda for three days.

Normally it is the football players who display this carefully cultivated remoteness, distancing themselves from controversy with a few meaningless banalities. But certain members of our cricket team are a breed apart when it comes to their engagement, or lack of it, with the subject at hand.

Kevin Pietersen had just made a beautifully composed century in the third Test at Old Trafford, only to alienate himself all over again with a monosyllabic masterpiece of a press conference. Does your knee hurt, Kevin? “Sometimes.” Will you need a rest at any point? “Nope.”

There is, of course, a history here. Pietersen, from the moment he lost the England captaincy in 2009, has loathed the press with a level of primal intensity that would make Sir Alex Ferguson’s vendettas look like playful badinage.

Given that his advocate-in-chief is that full-time celebrity leech, Piers Morgan, and that he now only grants interviews to his mates in the sport, KP does not exactly strain himself to project a lovable personality.

He is the emblem, alas, of a group of young men quite conspicuously unloved. While Alastair Cook’s side savour the satisfaction of a 3-0 series win, they ought to reflect upon how their uncompromising, occasionally cynical style of play denies them the acclaim that would otherwise be their due.

The ‘spirit of cricket’ can be a nebulous concept at the best of times but it refers, essentially, the notion of giving a little back to the game.

This is one department where Cook’s men – whether it be Broad’s time-wasting at Trent Bridge in taking off his shoe, or the England top order’s tactic of killing the match at the Oval with a glacial first-innings run rate – have been falling short all summer long.

On scoreline alone, England’s class of 2013 should command a place in the Ashes pantheon. And yet they are garlanded with nothing like the tributes showered upon the victorious teams of 2005 and 2009, when an open-top bus parade brought Trafalgar Square to a standstill or when Vauxhall residents would hang out of their balconies beside the Oval to watch the triumphant denouement.

The latest crop are a hardheaded, ferociously pragmatic bunch, but not in a fashion that redounds to their credit.

What they represent, as the ‘Splashgate’ after-party would illustrate, is just not cricket – or at least not as we would like to recognise it.

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Wayne Rooney would be welcomed at Chelsea with 'open arms', says Romelu Lukaku

“If he [Rooney] is part of our team I will welcome him with open arms,” said Lukaku. “You know when you are playing for a team like Chelsea there is going to be competition. I like competition.”

Asked if he and Rooney could make a good partnership, Lukaku said: “Obviously, but it is the manager’s choice. You have to accept that you have to work hard to make it a successful squad.”

That hard work has involved Lukaku working with Mourinho over these past two weeks on holding the ball up and using it effectively in restricted spaces.

"I feel I am making an impact,” he said.

"I can score more goals, I can get more assists. I can do more for the team. I can score with both feet and with my head, I am very quick and skilful. I can do a bit of everything but I can improve on things as well.

"He is the manager and he has a vision of the way he wants to play. The players have to improve to do that. I certainly have it in me. He is a great manager. He is very direct – and I love that. I would not say he has given me a hard time but he is very direct and in your face."

Although his priority has been working on the players’ fitness over these past two weeks, Mourinho is already beginning to implement the system he wants to play.

He says that his team selection will also be fluid according to the opposition and particular circumstances, as well as the fixture schedule.

“The players that go for their national teams two days before the opening of the Premier League, it depends a lot on that,” Mourinho said.

“They [the Spanish] have to go to Ecuador and come back in London on Saturday without having slept. I don’t think they are going to play on Sunday. The team will be decided game after game and week after week.”

Another complication is that Chelsea are likely to start the season with two matches in four days, with discussions ongoing about bringing forward the match against Aston Villa to Wednesday, Aug 21.

It is currently scheduled for the weekend of the European Super Cup game in Prague between Chelsea and Bayern Munich on Aug 30. Mourinho has also made decisions about which of the younger players will form part of his first-team squad.

Nathaniel Chalobah, Josh McEachran and Lucas Piazon will all be sent on loan next season, although there were particular words of praise for Chalobah.

“For sure, a Chelsea player,” said Mourinho. “He could be in our squad already. But we think one more season and it will be his last one out on loan. He is very, very good.”

Brazilian defender Wallace and Bertrand Traoré are also likely to go on loan until they receive their work permits, while Islam Feruz will return to the under-21 squad.

Czech defender Tomas Kalas, however, will remain with the first-team squad and will be competing with John Terry, David Luiz and Gary Cahill to start at centre-back.

“It was the first day of training when Mr Mourinho came to me and asked me if I would accept the challenge to be a first-team player and give it everything and, of course, I accepted,” said Kalas.

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