I judge players on Tests & County Championship; not ODIs.

Agree that Panesar should play if we really want two proper spinners, but if we're going to keep our 6 batsmen/4 bowlers strategy (with three seamers) I'd like to see Patel instead of Morgan on the Subcontinent.

Rikki Clarke is probably the best all-round fielder in England, well worth picking as twelfth man for any match in which Ricky Ponting may be involved.

ODIs don't count when the cricket purists are concerned as Prince of Denmark may be alluding to ?

I personally believe this 20/20 format will kill the traditional game as we have known it but that's another topic...
with respect this thread is about spinners,not all-rounders - Monty is a useful bowler but unless he has dramatically improved his variation I can't se him being of much use on the Test scene - i'd rather give Raschid,Tredwell or Borthwick the nod depending on fitness & county form

i'm not anti-Monty for any other reason than I don't think he would be much of a threat to any of the Test playing nations.

good luck to him down under and I hope he proves me wrong....

I think there's a bit of a bandwaggon that gets jumped on with Monty, the TV pundits picked up on the fact that he always bowled 56mph, every delivery was the same speed etc. When his form dipped, and more his confidence then they always came back to this, and things like that he didn't set how own fields etc, he seemed really immature as a bowler, especially one who'd taken 100+ test wickets, and good wickets, tore through Pakistan for example.

I think now, he's more confident in his own skin, he's worked hard, he bats & fields better and is a better bowler. He took the move to Hove to get to a surface that doesn't spin as much, to make him out think bastmen in the flight etc.

He was almost a victim of too much success, he got into the England side, took wickets, people wore his masks, it just snowballed. FFS, people cheered if he hit the ball at times when batting. I think getting out of the limelight will have done him no harm, but he's a fine bowler, he spins the ball, he gets bounce and I think he's better than what people credit him for, he didn't pick up 100+ mugs, he got good wickets, top order wickets.

As always in England, someone who had instant success was over-hyped, expected to take five-fers every other match, then had his game scrutinised for flaws and weaknesses when the success dried up. The novelty of him being a Sikh and a hopeless batsman & fielder just added to the cartoon image; a bit like a letter-day Devon Malcolm. (Only England could pick a "West Indian fast bowler" with Clark Kent spectacles who has to be hit on the head in order to prompt his best ever performance.)

Monty's still relatively young for an international spinner, and younger than Swann. I think he could be the ideal partner now, playing an ostensibly supporting role to the more extrovert Swann's contrasting style of bowling.

Yeah, agreed on all counts.

My only worry with Panesar, and I mean my only worry as I think most of the stuff said about him is invented is simply that in the winter if he's bowling in tandem with Swann, batsmen will sit in against Swann and probably look to attack Panesar, the last time we saw him, he could never react to this, he bowled it flatter and flatter and it seemed to shake him. I hope he's now overcome this, as he'll be targeted as 'frail'.

It's a different England too now, you're expected to be on it everytime you take to the field, there's an intensity about England, he'll need to be upto this.

I know it's ODI cricket, but you do get the impression Patel needs to take the opportunity in this series to play himself onto the plane this winter.