One is Taylor-made, another waiting to make the cut

It was here, in complete disdain —when he saw a young left-arm medium pacer and was left completely unimpressed — that he uttered something which, in future, would gift England with a reward like never before.

As a 15-year-old Bradfordshire teenager, all that Mudhsudhen Panesar had wanted to do was bowl fast, at least medium-pace. His broad arms, the left-one especially, would itch to walk back, run down up to the wicket and hurl deliveries at batsmen who he thought wouldn’t figure it at all.

As far as Taylor thought, Panesar had gotten it all wrong. For whatever he made out of the young Monty, the former England cricketer was almost sure, if not anything, that Panesar just wasn’t cut out for pace bowling. “I had asked him to go back home,” he says.

In retrospect, Taylor maintains, the decision would have never changed. He would never make a pace bowler. “There’s no future here if you are thinking about pace. You need to concentrate on spin. You’ve got the right arm action,” Taylor had told him.

Monty, nevertheless, was determined. If not a pacer, he stuck around until he convinced Taylor that he could roll his arm over. That was when the latter, with a bit of a rather hasty analysis — Taylor admits it now in hindsight — he asked Monty to take up left-arm spin. “It was something about his action, stamina and pace that wasn’t convincing,” adds Taylor.

This one genuine piece of advice — regardless of whether it was a well-thought one or laced with sheer ignorance — gave England, nine years later, a world-class spinner they had been yearning for.

Panesar is now England’s poster boy, his performances against India on tour last year — the prized scalp of Sachin Tendulkar on debut, spinning his team to a series victory over Pakistan and becoming the first England spinner to capture a fiver at WACA, Perth, making him stand taller than others even in their worst times.

In London, the abode for William and Hill — the bookmakers — there is little doubt who the locals are looking to bet their last penny on: Monty succeeding against India this time. Such has been the euphoria over Panesar and his left-arm spin that England wouldn’t mind going down the memory lane and thanking Paul Taylor for whatever little he did for England. Especially, that little gem of an advice to the young Panesar.