Mudhusuden Singh Panesar

Ranked at number 7 in the test bowling ratings, Monty Panesar is on a roll. His recent performance against the West Indies at Manchester in the game which ended just hours before this article is written says a lot.

Panesar has come of age. His talent is being utilised at the test match stage. The test against the West Indies really showed what he is made of. Critics for sometime questioned his batting and fielding abilities but his fielding performance in the third test at Old Trafford really showed that he’d been working on it.

He was always known to be hugely talented. A wonderful release, using the index finger to the fullest with the rip on the ball, seam pointing towards the right hander’s second slip – every coach’s prayer for a left arm spinner -, the wonderful flight and the ball drifting and curving beautifully into the right hander and then spinning sharply outwards on English pitches is a treat to the eyes. So often he draws the batmen forward and beats him with the flight, the ball moving towards first slip after the pitch. He could always do all this. But it is now that Panesar is showing us that he can do it all the time.

Michael Vaughan’s use of Monty Panesar of late has substantiated the point that Monty has come of age. In the Old Trafford test, Panesar bowled the maximum number of overs; he bowled 51.5 overs in the second innings. Earlier, Vaughan gave him a few overs here and there and usually it so happened that the pace bowlers bowled well early and Monty had to come in later with not much to do, he has bowled less that ten overs in 7 innings in his 16 tests! In one instance against India, Panesar bowled just four overs when 48 were bowled in all.

Panesar has shown determination and guts of late. He has gone on and on, probed continuously and worked hard but got results. In the match that concluded today (11/7/07), Panesar for the first time picked up ten wickets in a match. He has many more ten wickets to come – if he goes on like this that is.-BS