Cricket: Pietersen Takes on the Threat of Malinga

The difficulty with Malinga the Slinger, so England were warned, was that his action is so low that he delivers the ball out of the umpire's body. Well, if you must have one to act as a sightscreen then Darrell Hair's comfortably proportioned frame is as good as it gets. Never have England been so grateful to have a real ale drinker behind the stumps.

Eight overs for 56 suggest that England were seeing the ball pretty well out of Hair's voluminous white shirt. Malinga had three spells, of decreasing threat. His last three overs went for 26 with five fours, most of them to Kevin Pietersen who greeted the Test game's first beach cricketer in the approved manner, as if he was trying to smash him into the sea.

There is reason to suggest that Hair is actually better than the new sightscreen at the City End. Warwickshire built a breeze-block wall last winter to house it but they had not reckoned on a bonfire-night firework display. The protective covering damaged the Test track, the groundsman Steve Rouse switched pitches and the wall is in the wrong place.

Hair was one of the umpires when Malinga took nine wickets against New Zealand in Napier last year. First, the Kiwis asked the umpires to remove their ties. Then they asked them to tie a white sweater around their waists.

Before the second Test New Zealand's captain Stephen Fleming requested that they wore lightly coloured slacks. It was all too much for Hair, who had an umpire's version of a Trinny and Susannah moment. "We are told what to wear by the ICC and that's what we will wear," he ruled. "We all have to overcome difficulties at some stage of our lives."

But Hair has not quite grasped the utter tastelessness of the marketing age: an umpire fulfilling the role of a sightscreen should at least be allowed to turn into an advertising hoarding at the end of the over.

Whereas New Zealand fretted over Malinga - Fleming even developed a curious crouching stance - England were un-mesmerised. It is best not to make too much of these things, anyway. Dean Jones once demanded that the West Indies quick Curtly Ambrose remove his wrist band because he was "attempting some sort of camouflage". Australia were rent asunder.

Personal trainer time for fumbling Panesar

There is an MSN Messenger emoticon doing the rounds on the internet - a bendy blue exclamation mark which wiggles its hands above its head, blinks myopically and looks flustered that it has been spotted. Every day, it looks more and more like Monty Panesar in the field! It is already clear, though, that Panesar must have a full-time personal fielding coach.

That does not just mean a stony-faced Duncan Fletcher publicly thrashing catches at him on the outfield shortly before play, as he did at Lord's. It means the ECB should recognise that Panesar's rare bowling talent could be lost to Test cricket because of his bungling fielding and that it must finance the intensity of coaching a professional golfer would take for granted.

England have dropped 12 catches in this series, and the spinner has missed only one of them. But if he reproduces the agitated fumbles that saw him drop Lasith Malinga on nought yesterday - a comfortable head-high chance a stride to his right off Liam Plunkett - the feeding frenzy will begin.