Great point Luke. It is ironic that Jones got as many runs at Gilchrist at Lords and it will be interesting to see if Flintoff can develop a hoodoo over Gilchrist for the rest of the series.
Hovever it is clear that with such quality it is easy for Australia to only have 4 bowlers and it would be a brave step to drop Giles, who provides the variation. But look at this way, Giles is NOT Warne, he underperformed with the bat and has no 'mystery' in his game. The Aussies net against MacGill and Warne so are not going to be skittled by our Ashley. In effect he has been rendered useless by class batsman. He made no impact on reducing the run rate and did not look dangerous at all, in contrast he looked great last year against the West Indies but they are not Australia when it comes to batting. If you are keeping Giles for his variation then you can turn to Vaughan if required.
Imagine the middle order with Graham Thorpe back in it, now that looks tasty. Unfortunately the ECB have burnt that bridge.
So if you take the brave pill and play another batsmen you have to look at Collingwood [who is a great fielder, much needed after England spill 8 catches!] or Robert Key, bit of a maverick but you never know, would have been a good idea to play him in the one day challenge, or Solanki, technically good but untested.
The wheels have not come off for England yet and they should take heart from the bowling performance, but there are more schedule issues now as there are no games for the England batters to play in between now and the second test. And as far as I know there is no slope at Edgbaston.
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