All hopes on Monty to make it for Ashes tour

England The announcement that the England performance squad includes no fewer than four spinners and that not one of them is called Monty Panesar should not be a cause for concern for fans of the Sikh of Tweak. It has been documented well enough that the last year, since his unlikely derring-do diligence with the bat in Cardiff, has not been kind to him.

But far from seeing this as a rejection and a further setback to his career, my guess is he will understand that this is Andy Flower and Geoff Miller looking after his best interests by keeping him out of the firing line until his rehabilitation as a world-class spin bowler is complete.

I am sure at least I hope that is what both have told him. Aside from good management of a considerable asset, it speaks strongly to me, if they have spoken to him in these terms, of an understanding of human nature and a complex individual. Monty will be back, and I would hope it is for next winter's Ashes tour. At any rate, they can now leave him alone for the season to enjoy his cricket at Hove.

I recognise here a parallel of sorts with the fluctuating fortunes of James Anderson. When first he came on to the international scene, there was a refreshing naivety to his bowling. In the broadest of terms he just did, with the action and method that he had, what he had always done as a kid in the leagues.

Snaking away-swing

If there were flaws in his action, then they were offences against the coaching manual only, for the ball came out beautifully, the seam presented for his snaking away-swing with almost microscopic precision. He was ebullient, a joy to watch.

Then they tried to change him. If much of it was well-intentioned and designed to prevent injury, then the outcome was, as Gus Fraser and I discovered when we took him out to dinner in Johannesburg towards the end of the tour before last, a thoroughly confused lad who ended up with the broken back the changes were meant to guard against. The advice from a pair of old sweats was that somehow he had to trust himself, and try to recapture what it felt like to bowl in his formative years when it was all so natural: in other words to unlearn, something easier said than done. He is only just getting there.

The same thing has to happen with Monty. Vic Marks wrote in the Observer recently of watching Panesar in the Adelaide nets when he was at the academy, and I too recall seeing him there, by a distance the most impressive spinner on display. His action was the strongest by a future England spinner since that of Phil Edmonds. I remember, too, the opening over of his Test career, one morning in Nagpur a little over four years ago, a beautifully judged, confident maiden over to the India opener Wasim Jaffer. It is this feeling he has to try and recapture.

Maelstrom of advice

First, he can approach it from the standpoint that he is a proven Test match bowler of real quality. He will not have lost his ability outright, but he may have mislaid it in the maelstrom of advice he has received. Next, as with Anderson he can get back to the basic skills and philosophy that brought him to prominence in the first place. It is this, and the fact that in being an attritional leftarmer, that could, and should, provide the perfect counterpoint to Graeme Swann's more extrovert methods. For attritional is what Panesar should be.