Panesar addresses issues in bid for comeback

Monty Panesar, England's forgotten spin bowler, is preparing to speak out about the mental illness that led to his high-profile departures from Sussex and Essex, and says he has not given up hope of an England recall one day.

At the age of 33, and with 167 wickets in 50 Tests already to his name, Panesar ought to be in the prime of his international career, not least given the otherwise barren state of English spin bowling, as evidenced by the shortcomings of Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid and Samit Patel in the recent series against Pakistan.

Instead, he is without a county going into the 2016 season, having been released by Essex at the end of last summer. He played just three first-class matches in a miserable 2016 season, including one, against Kent in April in which he did not bowl in either innings.

His increasingly erratic behaviour included time-keeping issues, for which he was disciplined by the club, and criticism for his attitude in the field, for which he was at one stage given a dressing-down in front of his team-mates.

Panesar's failure to settle at Essex followed on from his departure from Sussex in 2013 where, in the wake of a bitter and painful divorce from his wife, he hit the headlines on one particularly lurid night out in Brighton by urinating on a bouncer at a nightclub.

However, in a bid to battle his way back into the sport, Panesar has been working with a team of four professionals - a performance coach, a hypnotherapist, a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist - and hopes that his recognition of his issues is the first step towards resolving them.

"For a long time I was in denial that I had a problem," Panesar told The Times. "It was in my first session with the hypnotherapist that I began to realise that something was wrong and that I needed help.

"The best way to describe it is that I have suffered from feelings of paranoia, and that these feelings were linked to my performances on the field. The worse things went, the lower my confidence went, the more paranoid I became. Things spiralled downhill so that I began to think my team-mates were all against me."

Panesar recounted one occasion in which he stormed out of a gym session after being out-performed by James Foster, the club captain, and some of his younger team-mates.

"I remember thinking that they were all out to get me and then when I calmed down I was, like, 'These guys are my team-mates, why am I thinking like that?'"

Panesar's obsessional nature impacted on his lifestyle on tour as well, where he would often retreat from his team-mates outside of matches.

"I'd be in my room a lot, always thinking about cricket and bowling. I found I got on with most players, but I didn't have any particularly close friends," he said.

"Those that I spent most time with were often tied up with my job: the wicketkeepers I'd work with, my bowling partners."

Panesar's absence from the sport is particularly poignant given what an integral member of the team he ought to be right now. On the 2012 tour of the UAE, he claimed 14 wickets in two Tests against Pakistan, including five-wicket hauls in consecutive second innings, providing precisely the sort of impact that England's spinners lacked on their most recent tour last month.

"One part of me thought, I should be the one out there bowling 30 or 40 overs a day going for two an over," he said. "But then another part of me was saying, 'Come on, Monty, you've not helped yourself.'"