“He sent me his number within 20 minutes, and we spoke the next day.”
Pelsall Cricket Club had been expecting an overseas player to fly over from Zimbabwe, but there were a series of visa and border issues that had caused him to be delayed.
When other options failed, a friend of Pennell’s told him he did not think that Panesar was playing this year.
“I think he was just at a loose end, he had moved to Leicester which is an hour away from us, he’d been playing in the East Anglia league, and it was going to be too far for him to get there,” he told the BBC.
He said that it had been a “whirlwind” since the news broke.
“We had a players meeting and I broke the news to them and literally they were in shock,” he said.
“The look on their faces, they were laughing 15 minutes later, we couldn’t believe it.”