Panesar's winter a beginning, not an end

Monty Panesar has watched his place as England's No. 1 spinner slip to Graeme Swann. Panesar was dropped from the England Test team after the first Ashes Test at Cardiff, despite his match-saving effort with the bat on a tense final evening, and has now lost his central contract. In the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes that a spell in South Africa should make Panesar a more assertive – and therefore better – cricketer.

Too many people, most with little idea of the technicalities of what he does, offer opinions and miss the essence of what he is as a bowler. His head bursts with information overload, when what is required is his game being stripped back to the bare essentials. And they are these: he has a strong action, and big hands which allow him to spin the ball prodigiously at times; he has a natural pace which is faster than many; he is capable of sustained spells of accuracy. That is a solid base of skills from which to work and expand, but first he should be encouraged to understand that essentially he is an attritional bowler, who gets wickets by persistence rather than magic deliveries. He suffers from an imperative to "make things happen" when his strength lies in the build-up of pressure.