THE FULL MONTY
Panesar on overcoming mental health problems, an England comeback... and finding a county
MONTY Panesar, the bowler who endeared himself to cricket by celebrating wickets with a hop, a skip and a jump, is trying to take things one step at a time. It has not always come easily.
A year ago, desperate to prove he was ready to resume a Test career that had finally come to a halt during the Ashes whitewash of 2013-14, he returned to action too soon after shoulder surgery.
The results were sobering: five Division Two wickets at 85 apiece for Northamptonshire and a sense among onlookers that, with the best will in the world, his time was up. Once the talk of the town, he was being whispered about in corners.
Now, just short of his 35th birthday, Panesar is giving it another go. His shoulder has recovered after a winter workout in Australia, he is off the medication he was taking for his welldocumented mental health issues, and he is allowing himself to dream of an Ashes tour.
There’s just one problem: he doesn’t have a county.
Given the performance of England’s spinners in India over the winter, when a hapless 4-0 defeat persuaded Alastair Cook to step down as Test captain, this might seem like one of life’s cruel absurdities.
Panesar is a veteran of 50 Tests and 167 wickets, the third-most by an England left-arm spinner after Derek Underwood and Tony Lock. At his best, he could be irresistible, once making fools of India’s spinners on their own tracks. He added to the gaiety of the nation. It can’t really be over, can it?
But he has been through a lot and on a clear, crisp day, sitting in the pavilion of his home club Luton Town & Indians, where his old No 46 England one-day shirt sits in a glass case on the wall, he reflects on an experience that would have floored many.
Panesar has just arrived from a net session at Northamptonshire, who are allowing him to train with them while he politely badgers the 18 first- class counties for a gig.
His problem, he suggests, is that he comes with baggage. British sport is learning not to treat mental health as a taboo, a problem to be solved with a packet of pills. But it is learning slowly and Panesar’s task is to persuade one of the counties that his ‘darker times’ are behind him.
‘I’m just hoping someone says, yeah, let’s see what you’re like,’ Panesar says.
‘Hopefully that resistance will be less when they see me bowling in the nets. Hopefully they’ll see I’m a different person.’
So what exactly did the darker times entail? Still a sportsman, Panesar reaches for an appropriate analogy.
‘It’s like you’re about to legpress 400kg and your mate who’s helping you sees another mate across the gym and goes over to talk to him.
‘You’re holding on to the weight because you need his help but as you try to call out his name your voice gets quieter. “Mate, where are you?” But he can’t hear you.
‘You get to that place where, internally, you’re holding on to this huge weight. All you need is your mate to help you and the weight’s lifted. At that time, I had a lot of weight on my shoulders, and I didn’t know how to get rid of it.’
By his own admission, Panesar’s behaviour grew erratic as he moved from Northamptonshire to Sussex, then to Essex, then back to Northamptonshire. Anecdotes followed him.
But winter coaching at Campbelltown in New South Wales provided an insight into so- called problem cricketers: ‘It gave me a reflection of myself. I thought, oh my god, my behaviour back then — I must have been really difficult.’
Panesar remembers the time he was 12th man in Sri Lanka, but instead of carrying the drinks he put on his headphones and drifted into a world of his own. Andy Flower, then England’s coach, was unimpressed.
On another occasion, at Essex, he and James Foster raced each other on gym bikes, watched by team-mates. Panesar became convinced they were cheering for Foster, and ‘went off in a huff’.
He became a loner consumed by his thoughts, shutting others out. Now, he wishes he had opened up. ‘ As sportspeople, we pride ourselves on being really strong,’ he says. ‘ Maybe I should have said: this is how I feel.’
With the help of former county wicketkeeper Neil Burns and the Sikh community — ‘I lost a touch of my own religion during the darker times’ — he has rediscovered a state of mind where life and cricket no longer seem quite as daunting.
He even fires back a couple of friendly shots at Shane Warne, who once said he had played not so much 33 Tests as ‘one Test, 33 times’. Panesar becomes animated. ‘In this country, whatever Shane Warne says is gospel. You guys think he’s the messiah. Whatever he says, we’ve got to put pen on paper, and next day’s headlines are, “Warney’s said this, Warney’s said that”. ‘Because he has such an impact, I hope this time round he says something positive and you guys write about it and all these perceptions of me evaporate. Then I’ll say, Warney, thanks for that.’ He really is itching to get back out there and he describes his failure to push for a place on the winter tours to Bangladesh and India as like dropping ‘a simple return catch’. All he wants now is a lucky break. ‘It’s like test-driving a car,’ he says with a smile. ‘You can’t just say from a distance, “I don’t like that car”. You have to testdrive it, see what it’s like, and say, actually, it’s better than what I thought it was. ‘ I just need people to think, let’s have a look at him and see where he’s at.’
Any doubts that Panesar is still turned on by cricket are dispelled during an animated description of how he would have bowled to India’s captain Virat Kohli, who took England apart before Christmas.
‘Kohli is a player who thrives on you bowling well and giving him intensity. Don’t give him the intensity. You need to get his mind to relax. He’s a very dangerous batsman when he’s sharp and focused and there’s a challenge.
‘So you don’t bowl your best balls. Spread the field, protect your boundaries, and get him to be lazy. Then, you go in with your stronger balls and catch him off guard.’
If that sounds like an unusual approach, then Panesar can point to the advice he gave slow left-armer Steve O’Keefe before Australia’s recent tour of India. O’Keefe took 19 wickets in the series at 23 apiece and memorably bowled Kohli as part of a 12-wicket haul during the first Test at Pune.
Panesar has enjoyed his first taste of coaching and is storing it all away for future use. But playing — that’s the thing.
‘I can’t really think about an England comeback until I play county cricket,’ he says. ‘I guess I’ll just give it my best shot.’
The nation will be crossing its fingers.