Monty Panesar

After a couple of months having my backside kicked all round Australia - you think it's just the players, huh? - goodness knows what prompted me to spend Tuesday morning watching the latest disaster silently unfold in Adelaide. This display, in a form of the game at which England have rarely excelled in the past decade and a half, was as inept as any this winter. On this evidence Jade Goody has more chance of become United Nations secretary general than England have in the World Cup in less than two months.

So in times like this, we clutch at straws, or "look for positives" as the England and Wales Cricket Board would have it, and for me it came with successive balls from the New Zealand express bowler Shane Bond to Monty Panesar. The first was dug in and as the batsman turned his head instinctively it hit him on the right shoulder. It was the next ball, though, that was telling, for Panesar is a tailender by upbringing is he not? As such he might have been forgiven for allowing himself a bit of width. Instead, he got in behind. Small thing maybe, but it takes courage.

But Monty is full of surprises. I thought he was a better batsman than his reputation suggested when in his maiden Test innings in Nagpur he saw Paul Collingwood to his first Test century, but better only in a steadfast holding-up-an-end sort of way. There were clues last summer, too, against Muttiah Muralitharan, not when he swung his bat and slogged him over mid-wicket for six, but in the same innings when he produced a top-rate lofted off-drive to a ball turning sharply away from him.

Fast forward to Sydney. A defensive shot is played to mid-off with perfect balance - knees bent into the stroke and elbow high. It drew, from Mark Taylor I think, the comment that it was the most technically perfect shot he had seen from an England batsman all winter. He was neither patronising nor exaggerating.

It is evident Monty can bat, or rather has the potential to become a batsman of considerable skill. He is a natural. However, having the potential to bat, and actually knowing how to bat are entirely different, the difference between theory and practice.

It provides England with a conundrum. All the nets, tutorials and coaching cannot instill in him the fundamental essence of constructing an innings: reading the pitch, assessing the bowling, manipulating the field and the myriad other disciplines that make a first-rate batsman. This comes with the doing. To fulfil his potential, he has to be allowed to bat. But how can he do this? Panesar is a centrally contracted player. His time will be devoted to England.

Even if he gets some county cricket with Northamptonshire, it would give their coach, David Capel, a problem. To give Panesar the batting he would need he would have to bat no lower than No7. In Capel's team, however, which might conceivably have the South African Lance Klusener as low as No8, it is not going to be possible to accommodate Panesar higher, unless there is a specific request, tantamount to a demand, from the England set-up. Capel, though, has a responsibility to his county and his own players. So Panesar will have to work his way up the order, step by step, unable to gain the real insight he needs.