Monty Panesar's catching and fielding

Monty Panesar's fielding is dreadful, just dreadful. He CAN catch. He CAN stop the ball. It's just by no means guaranteed.

Action plans seem to take one of two forms: One, England drop him for someone with better co-ordination; two, England make the sacrifice so as to benefit from his excellent bowling. We're siding with Duncan Fletcher on this one with option three: Teach Monty Panesar how to bloody well field.

The problem is that we're not sure if it's going to happen. We're of the opinion that a good deal of hand-eye co-ordination development occurs as a child and Monty Panesar was presumably busy with Transformers at this time. No-one's going to criticise him for that. Much as we love cricket, if we had owned Scorponok (pictured) we would have had a hard time tearing ourself away from him in order to go and bat on our own with a sawn-off adult bat and a sponge ball. So it may be that Monty Panesar just won't ever be able to field as well as his Transformer-deprived teammates.

But nevertheless it's worth trying because he's such a good bowler. If he can raise his fielding from 'catastrophic' to 'occasionally dicey' England will put up with it. So will we. We love Monty Panesar, but we reserve the right to be annoyed with his fielding. It's not endearing. It's not loveable. It's bad. We'll find him far more endearing and loveable when he's diving full length to catch Ricky Ponting at the MCG.