Moores has faith in Panesar

Peter Moores believes Monty Panesar still has time on his side as a left-arm spinner

Peter Moores believes England must be patient with the development of premier spinner Monty Panesar following his inability to make more of an impact on the final day of the opening Test.

Northamptonshire left-arm spinner Panesar was supposed to be the key man on the final day in Chennai when India chased a daunting victory target of 387 on a worn pitch at the MA Chidambaram Stadium.

But instead of Panesar imposing himself on the India batsmen, Sachin Tendulkar inspired a famous six-wicket victory by scoring an unbeaten hundred to give India an unexpected lead in the two-match series.

Panesar finished wicketless in 20 overs during the final day and rarely threatened to make a breakthrough, which followed a similarly disappointing performance in the final innings against South Africa at Lord's last summer when England were again in a dominant position.

But England coach Peter Moores is confident 26-year-old Panesar, who was playing his 34th Test, still has time on his side to develop into a world-class finger spinner.

"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."

Moores is hopeful Mushtaq Ahmed's appointment as a part-time spin coach next summer can speed Panesar's development.

"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 and Mishra run riot and they didn't."

Moores admitted the disrupted preparation to the Test series, which denied England a warm-up match when they returned to England to consider the rest of the tour following the terror attacks on Mumbai, had not helped Panesar in particular.

Panesar had been pencilled in to play club cricket in Sri Lanka as preparation for this tour and when the England and Wales Cricket Board could not come to an agreement, he was sent with the performance programme squad to Bangalore who also returned home after the Mumbai attacks.

"I have sympathy for Monty, who probably hasn't had a competitive game for four months because we didn't have our warm-up match so that's difficult for a spinner who wants to bowl some overs in match conditions," said Moores.

"As you go through your overs you get into rhythm so that's quite challenging for someone who is suddenly charged with the job of bowling out an Indian Test match team that are playing very good cricket.

"Monty has always loved the game and the one thing Monty has always been like is that when you put the ball in his hand he's happiest. He loves bowling and loves working on his bowling and from that point of view Monty's great to work with.

"He would be disappointed and he would have wanted to win a Test match for England and bowl them out, but you have to give them credit. We bowled a lot of good balls in the right area and they still managed to negate and rotate strike."