The Googly

Shane Warne having even more influence on England cricket

There are not many pies Shane Warne does not have his fingers in: the captaincy at Hampshire; baldness cures; sexual tabloid fodder; the new Indian Cricket League; and now, according to David Graveney, England selection.

Graveney has been talking to SK Warne about the spin options that England have at their disposal and seeking his counsel about who should be the back-up spinner for the winter tours to Sri Lanka and New Zealand.  "He sees a lot of players and has always been very good whenever Geoff Miller or I have asked questions, especially about England spinners," Graveney told the Sunday Telegraph.

You can look at this two ways.  On the one hand it is good that the ECB are brave enough to talk to such a great man about their lack of spin options, but it also confirms that the selectors have as much of a clue about who the second best spinner in England is as the rest of us.

It's Montage Panesar

Panesar  + Bonnie Tyler  = the best video ever.

Shane Warne gets carted by Fleming and McMillan

It didn't happen often, so this video is a gem of cricket history.  Stephen Fleming and Craig McMillan take Warne on in the 2001-02 VB Series, including McMillan facing one ball with a Peter Willey style front-on stance.  The cheek of it!

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Snap of the Day: Monty doesn't just do it for England you know

Monty Panesar goes ballistic after taking a wicket for Northants; just to show us all, as if we didn't know already, that he gets just as excited about all his victims not just the international ones. [Image: Getty]

Snap of the Day: the not so absent Indian

Harbajhan Singh, the man axed from both Indian squads this summer, begins his spell with Surrey today by taking three wickets.  [Image: Getty]

Monty makes it into ICC ratings top ten

Everybody's favourite England player, Monty Panesar, has also been making quite an impression on the statisticians at the ICC.  Following his astonishing 23 wickets at 18.69 in the recent series against the West Indies he has climbed to joint sixth in the world rankings to sit proudly alongside Matthew Hoggard.

As much as the ratings are a bit of a strange beast (Steve Harmison topped them once remember) this is still quite an achievement for the unassuming lad from Luton, and we here in the Googly Dungeon couldn't be happier for him.

[Image: Getty]

Snap of the Day: Monty Panesar in the nets

Lord Monty of Panesar shows us his catching technique in the England nets.  [Image: Getty]

Snap of the Day: Monty's caught & bowled

Monty Panesar, a split second before gripping Darren Sammy's drive in his paws, and a few moments before going completely barmy with the excitement of it all.  [Image: Getty]

Cricket Snap of the Day

Monty Panesar, as usual, jumps around like an ADHD child engorged with Rainbow Drops following another of his six dismissals in the Windies second innings. [image: Getty]

England - to spin or not to spin?

According to Aggers on the BBC website, the pitch at Lord's is grassy and the overcast conditions look set to stay.  This means that England could forego the selection of Monty Panesar in order to play a four man pace attack, in the increasingly likely absence also of Andrew Flintoff, this would mean Anderson and Shah coming in. 

I'm not sure this is the right move, the Windies will not face a class spinner in even the nets on this tour, and with only a truncated warm-up game behind them they are distinctly undercooked and ripe for some class spin magic.  Let's leave Monty in, and take this opportunity to let Paul Collingwood prove he can bowl in test cricket instead.

Kevin Pietersen hitting that incredible six

Kevin Pietersen can be infuriating at times; largely due to his talent for getting out stupidly, his arrogance, his hair... the list goes on.

However, a lot of the time he does things that most players would not even think to do, never mind actually pull off as well.  Like this legendary reverse-sweep six off one of the greatest bowlers of all time - he of course then got out stupidly next ball.  [lee calvert]

Fletcher talks crap about Panesar again

He may have beaten the Aussies single-handedly once, and in fairness helped turn England from a total laughing stock to an occasional one, but Duncan Fletcher doesn't half talk rubbish when it comes to our beloved Monty Panesar.  Speaking yesterday, it seems the jowly one has decided that the porcine Jamie Dalrymple is his number one spinner and if Monty wants a game he will have to displace a seamer from the team.  So basically, he does not want an attacking spinner in the team unless it is the number two spinner. 

Of course, in Dunc's defence, it could be argued that the reason for this is that none of the seamers available in the lower order can bat, whereas Dalrymple can, and that will maintain the all important "balance" in the team that Fletcher rates so highly.  However, the factor that everyone seems to forget is that a certain KP Pietersen bowled as a first choice off-spinner for his province before he decided he was English and could easily bowl ten overs if required.   I also feel Plunkett is talented enough to get some runs at 7 or 8 in the order.   This would leave Panesar to play the front-line spin position his talent and performances deserve, and we would have a team of Vaughan, Joyce, Bell, KP, Collingwood, Flintoff, Plunkett, Nixon, Anderson, Lewis/Mahmood, Panesar.

Of course, none of this would seem be so troubling if Fletcher had actually picked a wicketkeeper who could bat, rather than Paul bloody Nixon.  [lee calvert]

Monday Muse: All hail Chris Schofield

When Surrey take to the field in the 2007 County Championship there will be familiar looking figure amongst them, a testament to that thing we all love, the sportsman who refuses to give up. 

Chris Schofield was the last proper leg-spin bowler to play for England, he played two tests in which he took not a single wicket. An unusually tall wrist spinner with a gangly action and hair not unlike Billy Whizz, he nevertheless turned the ball a long way and was seen as talented enough to be given one of the first central contracts in 2000, albeit surprisingly and far too early. Having not bowled at all in his first test, in the second his bowling was as much a stranger to control as Rik Waller is to salad and talent.  The selectors put an 'x' in their collective notebooks.

 

Schofield was sent back to his county to develop his talent away from the glare of the test arena.  It was always going to be difficult to build a normal career with confidence shattered following his shambolic handling by the ECB , and so it proved .  With his figures on a seemingly constant downward spiral with the ball, and first team appearances becoming increasingly fewer, he was finally released by Lancashire in 2004 after coach Mike Watkinson deemed him surplus to requirements. 

Refusing to let the disappointments wreck his career, this man of willowy frame showed a surprisingly iron-clad determination to drag himself back into the county arena. His long journey back has been via minor counties Suffolk, the Surrey and Durham second XIs and working as a painter and decorator in between.  Surrey have been impressed enough to give him the contract this year that he has chased stoically for the last three.

What Schofield's story illustrates is two things.  The first is that the ECB are at times very stupid, the second is that the world class leg-spinner is coveted perhaps more than any other talent in the modern game.   In 2000 the fever in English cricket to find a home-grown Shane Warne, or at the very least someone better than Ian Salisbury, was cloying; Schofield was a talented kid caught in the crossfire of muddled thinking. Now, at the still tenderish age of 28 and turning out regularly for Surrey, maybe the international selectors could come calling again.   If they do, it will be all credit to Schofield himself.  [lee calvert]

Monty's dinner plates

England's new spinner, Monty Panesar, is winning lots of plaudits for his debut Test - and rightly so. Apparently he has hands like dinner plates and rips the ball so hard that it has affected the look and shape of his hands. However some cricket commentators are suggesting that he might not have the ability to 'keep an end plugged up' like Ashley Giles did so effectively. It's early days, but who cares if Monty can't fit into some tried and tested England game plan?! He's taking wickets. Big ones, too, and that's what matters. But er....let's not dwell too much on Monty's batting!!

Justin Hunt

Boycott blackballs Blackwell

Geoff Boycott has trashed Ian Blackwell's performance in the first Test. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Boycott says: '....he found Test cricket just a bit too much for him. He didn't make any runs and his bowling was local league stuff...'

Boycott is tipping the selectors to go for another seamer or Shaun Udal. The blunt yorkshireman is now the self-appointed expert on all cricket matters. And he does often have some good comments. However, for the record, I don't remember Boycott's bowling ever being much cop. He always used to
run up with his cap the wrong way round like some modern day rapper. And there were plenty of days when he didn't make any runs to the exasperation of the England team and the likes of the more talented Ian Botham, who was forced to run Boycott out on one famous occasion.

Justin Hunt

Perseverance pays off for England

What a great Test we're having. England’s day? Just about, but India will be over the moon at the wonderful hundred partnership between Anil Kumble and Mohammad Kaif. Were it not for that pair, India would have been bowled out for a really paltry total. Indeed, that would have been all the more probable 12-18 months ago, but this Indian side are tougher than they used to be. Tougher they might be, but they remain vulnerable to the swinging delivery and were brilliantly exposed by Matthew Hoggard who, at one stage, had figures of 4 for 6. This Test is alive and kicking and intriguingly poised.

The late strikes by England has put them in charge at the end of the third day though. The lead of 71 doesn’t sound significant - it’s not a huge lead by any means - but come the fourth innings, it could prove invaluable. India’s number eleven, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, has a batting average of 5.66 and ought not to make more than that.

After the disasterous pre-series preparations afflicting England’s squad, they seem to be gelling as a team - led by Andrew Flintoff. But the big story of the day has been Monty Panesar. I effed and blinded about his over-the-wicket nonsense at my other blog, but it’s a nevertheless a valid point. As soon as he reverted to bowling around the wicket, he grabbed a wicket - and the key one of Kaif who, until then, had batted sensibly if a little too obdurately. And what a pearler of a wicket it was. His first in Test cricket happened earlier in the day - none other than Sachin R Tendulkar! - but this second, late wicket was all the better. My Editor sums it up better than I can:

Perfectly flighted to drag the batsman forward, late dip to leave him stranded, and turn and bounce to detonate the middle and off stumps, the first Turbanation of the series had just been witnessed. Remarkably, however, it was England’s players who were doing the celebrations.

Well bowled, Monty. And well batted Kumbles. After I've watched the higlights I'll elaborate some more.

 

Will Luke writes for Cricinfo.com and edits The Corridor of Uncertainty

Murali's thousandth wicket

I think it was Courtney Walsh who first broke through the 500-Test barrier and, at the time, I remember feeling utterly amazed that anyone could have got so far. I was equally doubtful that anyone would ever better it. Since then, Shane Warne and Muttiah Muraliatharan have waltzed past it as though it were nothing; Warne broke past 600 at Old Trafford in the summer. Today, though, Murali has gone past 1000 international wickets! It makes Walsh’s effort look pitiful and feeble*

Rather appropriately, his 100th wicket was controversial: “Khaled Mashud was given out caught when the ball only hit his pad” (S.Rajesh / Cricinfo)

* I am, of course, joking. It’s all very well for these glitzy spinners to take hundreds of wickets, but it’s all the more incredible for a fast bowler to manage it.

Will Luke writes for Cricinfo.com and edits The Corridor of Uncertainty

Panesar gives glimpse of full Monty!

Now how about that for a headline? Monty Panesar is a tabloid sub-editor’s dream! Anyway, I’d like to agree wholeheartedly with Jag who was delighted to see an English left-armer bowl around the wicket. I know Ashley Giles gets a lot of stick, some of it undeserved, but even he cannot deny that his over-the-wicket tactics have been painfully dull to watch.

I didn’t see a lot of Panesar today. However, what immediately struck me was the similarity between Daniel Vettori. In the piece I wrote for Cricinfo on Monty, Mark Ramprakash said we [England] should be looking to find someone of Vettori’s ability. While it’s too early to suggest Panesar has the same ability - incidentally, he certainly doesn’t have the same talent with the bat which Vettori possesses - he did well today, and looks a decent prospect. It’ll be really fascinating to watch his progression.

Maybe one day he’ll be / reveal the full Monty! (sorry, again). Also, he's not the first Monty to play for England:

England

Bowden, MP (Monty Bowden, 1865-1892)

Cranfield, LM (Monty Cranfield, 1909-1993)

Garland-Wells, HM (Monty Garland-Wells, 1907-1993)

Panesar, MS (Monty Panesar, 1982- )

Of those, only Monty Bowden played Tests. Ah, but there's an obvious and fatal flaw in my logic: I've forgotten about all the Montague's and Montgomery's, and there must be dozens of those...oh well. Cracking name for a dog, I think, Montague...

Will Luke writes for Cricinfo.com and edits The Corridor of Uncertainty