Measuring Monty's monster hands

The Australian media has been obsessed with Monty Panesar in the lead-up to the third Test and after the way he bowled when finally given an opportunity, that is unlikely to change. But what grabbed reporters’ attention the day before the Test was the size of Panesar’s hands, as Robert Craddock explains in The Courier Mail.

Panesar's hands are so big he can comfortably fit three cricket balls into the palms and fingers of each. The middle finger of his left hand, which controls his deliveries and imparts some turn, is an extraordinary 11cm from base to tip.

Chloe Saltau wrote in The Age that Monty’s big hands give him a natural advantage.

John Emburey, the former England off spinner who was coach of Northamptonshire when a 16-year-old Panesar arrived for a trial with the county in 1998, said the young Sikh's fingers were the longest he had seen on a finger spinner, and provide a prodigious natural advantage.