{"id":24910,"date":"2025-11-20T17:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T17:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/20\/better-than-being-a-cheat-monty-panesar-hits-back-at-steven-smiths-trolling-cricket-news\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T17:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T17:46:12","slug":"better-than-being-a-cheat-monty-panesar-hits-back-at-steven-smiths-trolling-cricket-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/20\/better-than-being-a-cheat-monty-panesar-hits-back-at-steven-smiths-trolling-cricket-news\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Better Than Being A Cheat’: Monty Panesar Hits Back At Steven Smith’s Trolling | Cricket News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Last Updated:<\/span>

Monty Panesar goes on a long rant against Steve Smith after the stand-in Aussie captain trolled him over mistakes in a quiz, saying his GK issue was ‘better than being a cheat’.<\/h2>\n
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\"Monty<\/p>\n

Monty Panesar goes on a rant against Steve Smith.<\/p>\n

(PC: AFP)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Former England spinner Monty Panesar has hit back at Steven Smith after the stand-in Australia skipper trolled him over his \u2018pretty comical\u2019 performance on the \u2018Mastermind\u2019 quiz show six years ago. Panser said that his mistakes were a lack of general knowledge, which is \u2018better than being a cheat\u2019.<\/p>\n

Panesar began the spat when, in a recent interview with a gambling platform, he urged the England team traveling for the 2025-26 Ashes to sledge and make Smith feel \u2018guilty\u2019 about Sandpapergate. Smith seemingly came prepared for that question in his press conference on the eve of the first Test in Perth, and unfurled a two-minute monologue, listing several of Panesar\u2019s errors in the quiz show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve started, so I\u2019ll finish,” Panesar wrote for The Telegraph<\/em>. \u201cThose were the words I heard at the end of my Mastermind shocker six years ago. But if I\u2019m guilty of anything, it is having bad general knowledge. And that is better than being a cheat.”<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 I watched the Australia cricket captain launch his hilarious press conference performance from the comfort of my sofa. And what a performance it was. I simply cannot believe that the Australian captain on the eve of the Ashes brought up my Celebrity Mastermind performance from 2019. Yes, I know I had an absolute shocker that day. I got six questions right on my specialist subject, Sikhism and its history, then got only one question correct in the general knowledge round. It was terrible, I know it was bad.”<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, at least I can hold my hands up and admit that. It\u2019s bad knowledge, but at least it isn\u2019t ball-tampering. I would actually ask Steve whether he can look himself in the mirror yet and admit that he was part of \u201csandpapergate”, the worst example of Australian cheating in history.”<\/p>\n

Panesar said Smith had revealed a \u2018massive weakness and mental vulnerability,\u2019 something elite players cannot afford. He accepted that both men had made mistakes, but pointed out that his were on a TV quiz show, while Smith\u2019s came on a cricket field \u2014 and only one of them seemed willing to accept it.<\/p>\n

He added that Smith should simply have owned up when asked about Sandpapergate instead of deflecting to Mastermind, calling the tactic \u2018foolish\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people have suggested what he did was bullying, but I don\u2019t believe that. He\u2019s tried to deflect the attention on to me and I get that. But what I do question is whether he should be Australia captain given what he has done? That for me raises serious questions about Australia\u2019s leadership and a lack of it across the squad. If it was an England player who had been found guilty of blatant ball-tampering like Smith\u2019s team were, I don\u2019t think they would be captaining this team going into this series. I think that would be very tricky given how 2018 played out,” Panesar said.<\/p>\n

The former spinner concluded by saying that Smith had made \u2018a massive blunder,\u2019 and he was eager to see how it played out, hoping the fallout might disrupt Australia and tilt the series in England\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s not atypical of former cricketers to try and get under the skin of the current ones and for the latter to respond publicly, this incident is being described in both countries as pretty \u2018bizarre\u2019.<\/p>\n

What did Steve Smith say?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Smith, with his comments, seemed to suggest that he wasn\u2019t \u2018bothered\u2019 about the comments from someone who\u2019d make such simple mistakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m gonna go off topic for a second here,” Smith said. \u201cWho have you in the room have seen Mastermind and Monty Panesar on that? Any of you? Yeah, well, those of you that have, you\u2019ll understand where I\u2019m coming from, and those of you haven\u2019t, do yourself a favour because it\u2019s pretty comical. Anyone that believes that Athens is in Germany, that\u2019s a start; Oliver Twist is a season of the year and America is a city, [it] doesn\u2019t really bother me, those comments. That\u2019s as far as I\u2019ll go with that one,” he added.<\/p>\n

The Ashes begin on Friday with the first Test at the Optus Stadium, starting at 9:30 am IST.<\/p>\n

First Published:<\/span><\/p>\n
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November 20, 2025, 23:04 IST<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

News<\/a> cricket<\/a> ‘Better Than Being A Cheat’: Monty Panesar Hits Back At Steven Smith’s Trolling<\/span><\/div>\n
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Last Updated:November 20, 2025, 23:04 IST Monty Panesar goes on a long rant against Steve Smith after the stand-in Aussie captain trolled him over mistakes in a quiz, saying his GK issue was ‘better than being a cheat’. Monty Panesar goes on a rant against Steve Smith. (PC: AFP) Former England spinner Monty Panesar has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}