{"id":537379,"date":"2026-04-18T07:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T07:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/537379\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T07:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T07:26:09","slug":"how-ex-england-player-monty-panesar-came-to-join-pelsalls-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/537379\/","title":{"rendered":"How ex-England player Monty Panesar came to join Pelsall&#8217;s team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He sent me his number within 20 minutes, and we spoke the next day.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When other options failed, a friend of Pennell&#8217;s told him he did not think that Panesar was playing this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think he was just at a loose end, he had moved to Leicester which is an hour away from us, he&#8217;d been playing in the East Anglia league, and it was going to be too far for him to get there,&#8221; he told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said that it had been a &#8220;whirlwind&#8221; since the news broke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We had a players meeting and I broke the news to them and literally they were in shock,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The look on their faces, they were laughing 15 minutes later, we couldn&#8217;t believe it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;He sent me his number within 20 minutes, and we spoke the next day.&#8221; Pelsall Cricket Club had&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-537379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}