There was a poignant passage of play at the Brit Oval yesterday. It was as if footballers were to express their sadness at the retirement of Cristiano Ronaldo by performing massed stepovers; or rugby players had marked the passing of David Campese by doing the goose-step; or tennis players had celebrated the end of Pete Sampras’s career by playing slam-dunks.

Ashley Giles retired from all cricket yesterday and for a handful of overs his successor as England’s first-choice left-arm spin bowler, Monty Panesar, bowled over the wicket to a largely defensive field with a couple of optimistic close catchers. It was like an elaborate tribute to Giles, who always preferred to bowl in this way, in defiance of all those who said that it was a negative tactic.

“Everything I did, I did for the team,” Giles said yesterday, words that would look well on his tombstone. The over-the-wicket stuff did bring him wickets, but it was even better at giving his captain control of the match: block up one end and the seamers can hammer away all day from the other. Statistics never show how many wickets fell at the other end, but what are stats if you are doing it for the team?

Giles is only 34, still young for a spinner, but he has been troubled with hip problems for some time and has had three operations in the past 18 months. He had little option but to step down and does so with regret, resignation and good grace. In truth, he seems already to be a figure from the past.

His injury problems opened the way for Panesar to make his explosive entrance into Test cricket.

Panesar, national love object, homely exotic, is a man who dominates cricket matches. That means he is nothing like Giles. They just bowl with the same hand, that’s all.

And Giles became an object of derision when he was selected – disastrously – ahead of Panesar for the first two matches in the Ashes series last winter. It was a bad decision, a decision made in funk. The England fans wanted the exploding Monty; instead, they got steady Ashley. There was blame by implication, as if it were Giles who lost the Ashes.

But of course it was Giles who won the Ashes. Indeed he did, in the unforgettable cricketing summer of 2005. The great thing about Giles is that he became the best cricketer he possibly could have been. He fulfilled the talents he had to their uttermost degree, and how many geniuses can you say that about? He made the most of what he had and no man should be despised for that. It’s what we all try to do, whether we are Picasso or a painter and decorator.

Don’t revile Giles for his failure to be Shane Warne; celebrate for giving his captain control time and again, most spectacularly in the period up to the 2005 Ashes, in which England won six successive Test series within 18 months – a lightning-swift golden age. Don’t even revile him for not being Panesar, celebrate him instead for making himself, by means of willpower, as good a No 8 batsman as you could find in Test cricket.

Well, all right, Warne was better, but in 2005 it was Giles who hit the winning runs as England won at Trent Bridge to take a 2-1 lead in the Ashes series that would never be overhauled. In the next match, at the Oval, the Australians were held at bay by the ferocity of Kevin Pietersen’s counter-attack . . . and, with quiet inevitability, it was Giles who kept him company at the last, making his highest Test score of 59.

He took ten wickets in the series: a chipper-inner, a contributor, a team man, a spear-carrier. He was never the prince, nor was meant to be; always an attendant lord. That was his weakness, that was his strength.

A Test-match captain always wants three or four of life’s five-fer men to bowl for him, but, like Tony Hancock and packets of all-black wine gums, you can’t always get ’em. And if you can’t get world-class performers to fill every slot in your bowling attack, then you look for the Gileses of this world and count yourself damn lucky if you get one.

Giles took five wickets in an innings on five occasions and took 143 wickets in all. His 100th was Brian Lara, bowled out of the footmarks. He completed the double of 100 wickets and 1,000 runs in Test matches, stats that trumpet his worthy qualities.

Worthiness doesn’t stir the blood. Well, not often. But there is a time when worthiness becomes the most thrilling virtue in sport, and that time is when there is a Test to be won and a couple of bowlers are out there trying to win it with their bats. At times such as that, you revel in the unglamorous virtues that Giles represented. You wouldn’t want Panesar with bat in hand at such a time.

You need the safe men, the sure men, the men who get things done. In every walk of life, the high achievers, the people of outrageous talent, will do their stuff, but always, always, you find the other sort of guys around them, the people who make it all possible. Vincent would never have painted a picture without his brother Theo; England would not have had their twinkling of a golden age without Giles.

Giles’s greatest talent as a cricketer was his generosity, his willing gift of himself to the team cause, in the sure and certain knowledge that it would be others who got the applause and in the absolute certainty that he really didn’t give a damn. “I want to leave the game being considered a good bloke,” he said yesterday.

You won’t tell your grandchildren: “I saw Ashley Giles play cricket.” But you’ll tell them about the Ashes of 2005 and you wouldn’t be telling the tale if Giles hadn’t been there.