Jonathan Agnew column

By Jonathan Agnew
BBC cricket correspondent

Panesar does not seem to have the necessary intuition and flair to improvise when the need arises

Jonathan Agnew

The slow, spinners' pitch at Sabina Park is not the only thing to have surprised people here.

West Indies find themselves in a handsome position going into the third day on a track on which a 100-run lead could prove decisive, and their captain Chris Gayle has played an innings of real responsibility when, too often, he suffers a rush of blood.

Quite how England extricate themselves from this depends as much on the way West Indies bat on the third morning as how England bowl.

Monty Panesar will, again, be disappointed to have bowled 15 wicketless overs in favourable conditions. In his first over, he made one delivery spin sharply at Ramnaresh Sarwan, but he produced only one more before Andrew Strauss turned to Kevin Pietersen's off-spin.

There's little doubt that, given the chance again, England would have chosen a second spinner rather than a fourth paceman.

Panesar bowled just like Panesar does but, like in India, he did not look for variation and guile as an option.

I think it is fair to assume now that this is the way Panesar will always bowl and on pitches that are a little quicker and have some bounce, he will be successful, but the evidence is mounting that suggests he does not have the necessary intuition and flair to improvise when the need arises.

Matt Prior batted with a fluency that belied the slow pitch, and perished only because he was looking to bat positively with the arrival at the crease of Ryan Sidebottom. This will help his confidence both with the bat and, hopefully, behind the wicket, too.

So to the contentious bit, the referrals. We had everything on the second day - a 'not out' lbw verdict being changed to 'out' and an 'out' decision overruled to 'not out'.

There was also the rather crazy situation of both Steve Harmison and Panesar, numbers 10 and 11, referring their perfectly good lbw verdicts simply because England had not used up their allocation.

This amounted to little more than a waste of time - and the delay in waiting for Umpire Harper's advice lasted for five minutes in one case. That is too long, and must be speeded up � but it is also true that Sarwan got the right decision in the end, and that is what this is supposed to be about.