Moores backs under-fire Monty

Panesar was supposed to be the key man on the final day in Chennai when the home side chased a daunting victory target of 387 on a worn pitch at the Chepauk Stadium. But instead of Panesar imposing himself on the India batsmen, Sachin Tendulkar inspired a famous six-wicket victory by scoring an unbeaten hundred.

"If you look at Monty's record in Test match cricket it compares very favourably to a lot of spinners who have started out in the game and he's still very young in the game," claimed Moores.

"People talk about him developing and changing pace and that takes time, we know that with spinners. They have to add things to their game as batters do and all cricketers do to stay ahead of the game."

Panesar's disappointing display on Monday follows criticism from Shane Warne last summer, who claimed England's leading spinner had not learned from his time in international cricket and had simply played the same Test repeatedly.

But Moores, who is hopeful Mushtaq Ahmed's appointment as a part-time spin coach next summer can speed Panesar's development, has refused to become embroiled in a war of words with Australia's leg-spin legend.

"Shane Warne can have his view, but I work with Monty on a day-to-day basis and he works very hard at his game," said Moores. "He wants to develop his game and he is developing his game and he's at that point in his career where he is learning all the time.

"Once you learn something, you practice it and then you can start to use it in a game. It's not an overnight process.

"One of the keys to Monty in this Test match is that he's not had a run of games and I don't think it was as easy as the pitch looked because otherwise Harbhajan (Singh) and (Amit) Mishra would have run riot and they didn't."