Cricket: 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.