Panesar off to the jungle?

ENGLAND’s troubled former spin bowler Monty Panesar may be the most surprising name in the line-up for ITV’s reality show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! that starts in Australia next month.

Panesar is already Down Under playing grade cricket in sydney to get himself fit and in the right frame of mind for a return to first- class cricket with Northants next season and his possible jungle challenge.

Monty has talked about the lucrative realityshow approach with his trusted cricket mentor, Neil Burns, who advised him to first get back playing regular cricket with his sydney team Campbelltown-Camden Ghosts to regain his confidence before considering other options outside cricket.

Being under scrutiny on the ITV show would be an extraordinary move for Panesar (right), considering his wellpublicised mental health problems that he has worked on with a four- strong team of Burns, a hypnotherapist, psychiatrist and a psychotherapist.

Monty went off the rails following the break-up of his marriage in 2013. Incidents included him urinating on bouncers outside a Brighton nightclub. He said about that time: ‘I was suffering from paranoid thinking, I was low on confidence, in denial, and did not engage with team-mates. The world felt against me.’ Not exactly an ideal c.v. for I’m a Celebrity’s brutal exposure.

Panesar took 167 wickets for England in 50 Tests — the last in Melbourne on the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash tour. His hopes of returning to the England squad for the spin-friendly tours of Bangladesh and India were dashed by a serious shoulder injury. An ITV spokesman said: ‘We never comment on speculation about I’m A Celebrity ahead of the names being announced. They can change up to the last minute.’ MANY

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Bar and Extra Time programmes, that they protested outside Talk’s offices near Waterloo.

Sports Bar host Jason Cundy was a target. FA CHAIRMAN Greg Clarke has stayed in both the England players’ hotel and the additional accommodation booked for non-tracksuit FA personnel for games in slovakia and slovenia. And Clarke is now of the opinion that there should only be one hotel for all the FA party when England next travel to Germany in March. BOOKMAKERS

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