Monty Panesar

The Hollies Stand is the rude, ripe and raucous quarter of the handsome Edgbaston arena that cheerfully prevents the pavilion membership from preening overlong on its aldermanic presumptions of bourgeois Brummie dignity. The stand is named after the legendary Warwickshire spin bowler Eric, roly-poly Black Country tweaker and possessor of, famously, "the hand that bowled Bradman", but the structure has become better known in recent years for housing the hammy cabaret pantomimes now de rigueur among the Test match throng.

At this week's second Test, however, the ribaldry of the matily mocking Hollies hoi-polloi - last summer, for reasons and subtleties best known to themselves, they taunted the former premier John Major with an inflatable shark - could provide a sideshow with interesting implications, for I fancy it might even affect the make-up of England's team to defend the Ashes next winter.

If the hapless fielding of England's young spin bowler Monty Panesar begins to attract sustained and barbed badinage from the shameless soccer-style Hollies enclosure - don't forget, he plays as substitute for Warwickshire's lame favourite Ashley Giles - would there be any surprise if it caused England's earnestly sobersided coach, Duncan Fletcher, simply to withdraw the youngster from the team altogether, rather like an embarrassed, uptight British skiing team got shot of that endearing national joke Eddie the Eagle? Fletcher knows that while the fabled barrackers' Hill at the SCG may have gone, the cruel, barbed and orchestrated scorn of tanked-up Aussies has not.

The middle-class chirp and chaff with which the Lord's crowd, half-fondly, gave Panesar the bird will be nothing to the concentrated hilarity and jeers rolling down from the Hollies denizens - and even the mild scoffing at Lord's, you could tell, had Fletcher seething and squirming behind his wraparound shades on the balcony. So might the bawdy "Vaudevillains" of the Hollies be on their muted best behaviour at the weekend? Not a chance.

Monty's answer, of course, would be to take a hatful of Sri Lankan wickets. If he is given the chance, that is. At Lord's, England's seam bowlers bowled 227 overs; Panesar a measly 27 - only two from the "slope encouraging" Nursery End where left-armers have always made hay, from Verity to Underwood, and the Middlesex southpaws Tufnell, Edmonds, and imperishable midget Jack Young. Mind you, Monty's short rations in his first Lord's Test were 27 more overs than England's last "genuine" debutant spinner six summers ago.

Chris Schofield made a duck and bowled not a single delivery in his Lord's Test of 2000 against West Indies; while a fellow rookie, and county buddy, scored only one run and was allowed but three paltry overs. The two of them did not do much better in the next Test at Nottingham, and were both summarily dropped, with Wisden scathingly, damningly, noting: "Worryingly, the two young Lancastrians, C Schofield and A Flintoff, appear to lack the nous required at the highest level."

When 'Enry fell at Highbury

It Seems Like Yesterday dept . . . Sunday was the 40th anniversary of Henry Cooper's challenge at Highbury for Muhammad Ali's heavyweight title. The good ol' boy was doing all right, too, until Ali scalpelled him in the sixth to cause, as Peter Wilson described in next day's Daily Mirror, "'Enry's eyebrow to gape like an over-lipsticked harlot's mouth." Coincidentally, this Thursday is the 30th anniversary of Ali's more merciful KO of Richard Dunn in Munich. I flew there with the Yorkie former paratrooper - very nice guy, very ordinary fighter. At Heathrow, he bought his regiment's paperback, A Bridge Too Far. "Richard," I told him, "you must stop writing my intros for me."

Significant boxing dates abound at the moment. The most unconcernedly belligerent fighter I ever winced at (and for), Terry Downes, was 70 on May 9. Best pound-for-pound boxer I ever saw, or ever will, Sugar Ray Leonard, turned 50 last Wednesday - to the day, too, the 40th anniversary of tragic, disgracefully done-by Randolph Turpin committing suicide. For my money, after true-great Turpin, the very best British boxer of my span was John Conteh; lovely John is 55 this Saturday.

On May 14, my reverie logged the exact 60 years since us urchins were allowed to stay up around a wireless set in the school common room and listen to our hero "Handlebar Harry", the lushly mustachioed Raymond Glendenning, do his frantically colourful commentary of the world light-heavyweight epic between Freddie Mills (barnstorming former Bournemouth milkman) and our hate-figure, the American Gus Lesnevich. I suppose that was the first time (and too many subsequently) I used the cliché: Brave Brit Gives It All But Loses. Oh, and on Sunday week Mike Tyson hits 40.