Don't do it, Duncan

Duncan Fletcher said yesterday that England have got to play five bowlers in the first Test, because Andrew Flintoff isn’t fit enough yet to be one of four. Which makes sense. He also dropped a heavy hint that Ashley Giles would be one of the five, and Monty Panesar wouldn’t. Which makes no sense at all.

Fletcher explained that he wanted control. Well, Panesar offers more than Giles does. He goes for about 2.6 runs an over in Tests, while Giles, over the past two years, has gone for 3.3. It’s a perfect illustration of how attack is the best form of defence. Despite being possibly Test cricket’s most defensive slow bowler, Giles is actually less good at defending than Monty, who prefers to attack.

Fletcher wants Flintoff not to overbowl himself. Well, Panesar will bowl more than Giles. Monty bowls 40 overs per Test, Giles 31 – and that’s making no allowances for the fact that Giles is returning from a long lay-off. So if Giles plays, at least nine more overs will have to be bowled by the seamers, who are more expensive than Monty.

Fletcher (presumably) wants wickets. Monty got more this summer than any other England bowler. He took 27 wickets, Matthew Hoggard 25, Steve Harmison (who missed three Tests) 20, and Flintoff (who missed four) 12. Monty’s strike rate in the summer was 62 balls per wicket. Giles’s has recently been 92. Giles takes two wickets per Test, Monty three to four. Unless the ball swings for Hoggard, it’s fair to say that with Harmison out of sorts and Flintoff feeling his way back, Panesar is the England bowler most likely to get good batsmen out.

Fletcher is in danger of repeating the mistake he made in the last Ashes series, when he picked Ian Bell ahead of Graham Thorpe on the grounds that Thorpe could no longer bat at number four, and therefore had to compete with Kevin Pietersen for the number five spot. This line of thinking presumed that Bell was ready to bat at four, which he wasn’t.

This time, Fletcher is thinking: Brisbane is mainly a seamers’ pitch, so the spinner needs to offer control, so we can take the more defensive option. And this is leading him into a double fallacy. First, as shown above, Monty offers better control. Secondly, the best form of control is taking wickets. Shane Warne takes plenty at Brisbane. Even Giles took some there four years ago. On all the evidence, Monty would take more, for fewer runs.

Against that, he would cost runs in the field and with the bat, but then so do many good bowlers. Alastair Cook doesn’t bowl, and is not a great fielder, but that’s no reason to replace him with a bits-and-pieces player. Giles has sterling qualities as a team man, but if England really need those on Nov 23, they should play him as a second spinner, ahead of the fourth seamer, Sajid Mahmood. It would be an unusual move at Brisbane, but England did it in 1986-87 (with Emburey and Edmonds), and that was the last time they won there.

Monty has made the first slow-bowling slot his own. More than that, as Warne says, he has made England a better team, which is a remarkable feat for a man still in his first year of international cricket. Michael Vaughan has said that England have to attack if they are to beat Australia again. Monty is a weapon they can’t afford to be without.