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Perth: Australia captain Steve Smith has used former England spinner Monty Panesar’s embarrassing performance on a UK quiz show to return fire at the retired cricketer’s sandpaper sledge.
Panesar urged England players and the British media to target Smith for his role in the ball tampering scandal of 2018 but was treated with disdain by the Australian great.
Clearly prepared for the line of questioning from broadcaster and reporter Bharat Sundaresan about those comments, Smith referenced Panesar’s 2019 appearance on a celebrity edition of the BBC’s Mastermind to shoot him down.
“I’m gonna go off topic for a second here,” Smith said to a packed room of reporters in the bowels of Perth Stadium on Thursday afternoon. “Who of you in the room have seen Mastermind and Monty Panesar on that?
“Any of you? Yeah, well, those of you that have, you’ll understand where I’m coming from, and those of you haven’t, do yourself a favour because it’s pretty comical.
“Anyone that believes that Athens is in Germany, that’s a start; Oliver Twist is a season of the year and America is a city, [it] doesn’t really bother me, those comments.
“That’s as far as I’ll go with that one.”
Panesar said earlier this month that England’s players needed to get inside Smith’s head over the events in South Africa. Smith was suspended from international cricket for 12 months by Cricket Australia and stripped of the captaincy as part of a leadership ban.
Smith returned to an official leadership role in November 2021 and has filled in as captain when Pat Cummins has been unavailable.
“Ben Stokes and the England team have got to make Steve Smith feel guilty and play on that,” Panesar told Aceodds.com.
“Say something like, ‘I don’t think it’s ethical that he’s the captain, I don’t think he played the game fairly’. Really get into him and make him feel guilty about it.”
Panesar also urged the British tabloids to lay into Smith.
Australian great Steve Smith had no trouble brushing aside criticism from former England skipper Monty Panesar.Credit: Getty Images
“If it was the opposite, the Australian media would be all over it,” Panesar said. “They would have said, if it was any of the English players, ‘The cheaters have arrived’. Right? This is where the UK media must also focus and put pressure. Use it as a way to help England.
“I hope that England uses it as an advantage and don’t just get quiet about it because we know he bats well when he’s captaining Australia.”
Despite Panesar’s urgings, Stokes was full of respect and admiration for Smith.
“Not too much has changed, because he just gets runs against us, doesn’t he?” the England skipper said on Thursday.
“That seems to be a constant. [He’s a] serious player, [and] has been for a very long time. Him and Joe Root, neck and neck in my opinion in terms of the greatest batters of this generation. You always want to come up with ways to keep the best players quiet. That’s something we’re going to have to do. It will be a hard thing to be able to do.”
A left-arm spinner who claimed 167 wickets in 50 Tests, Panesar was not known for his cricket smarts as a player. The late Shane Warne once said of his ability to learn from experience: “Monty Panesar hasn’t played 33 Tests – he’s played one Test 33 times.”
Judging by his answers on Mastermind, his general knowledge is not much better.
Smith, Australia’s stand-in skipper, with England captain Ben Stokes in Perth the day before the blockbuster Ashes series starts.Credit: Getty Images
Asked by the host John Humphrys “in which city is the Olympiastadion, built for 1972 Olympics and where German’s national football team played international matches until 2001?” Panesar replied: “Athens”.
Panesar spoke about his Mastermind flop on the Monty Panesar & The Specialist Fielders podcast in 2020.
“General knowledge came, the Mastermind seat got me, I had stage fright,” Panesar said. “I had my Mastermind meltdown. It was worse than facing a Mitchell Johnson bouncer!”
Panesar also blamed the host’s lack of cricket knowledge for his display.
“He didn’t know what cricket was or something like that,” Panesar said. “It makes you feel comfortable when someone says, ‘I know who you are’, because then it’s like ‘OK, I can relax a little bit.’
“I think he purposefully said it to intimidate me, and it worked. He was probably laughing away inside thinking, ‘This guy is completely thick’. I watched it back and I thought, ‘This Monty Panesar is really thick’.
“He’s like, you know Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons? He reminds me of someone like that, sitting there thinking, ‘I’ve got this guy. I’ve got one who’s having a meltdown, and I’m going to go after him’. He’s obviously a legend broadcaster, he’s got a real presence. I don’t think we did [speak afterwards], and I didn’t really want to either.”
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