Monty Panesar: Spinner to travel with Northants on pre-season Barbados tour

Monty Panesar has taken 704 first-class wickets during his career, claiming five in an innings 39 times

Former England spinner Monty Panesar will travel with Northants on their pre-season trip to Barbados.

The 33-year-old was released by Essex last summer after off-field "issues".

"Monty's been undergoing shoulder rehabilitation with Barry our physio," said Northants captain Alex Wakely.

"He's been toiling away with us and decided to pay his own way to come with us to Barbados and continue the rehab, so hopefully one day he can get to bowling fitness."

Meanwhile, batsman Wakely, 27, has signed a new two-year contract at Northants and will remain captain across all formats for the county.

Panesar, capped 50 times at Test level by England, began his career with Northants before moving on to Sussex and Essex.

But he does not have a club for 2016 after only making three first-class appearances last season.

He made himself unavailable for selection early last season and later admitted to having bouts of paranoia.

His release was the latest in a series of setbacks for the slow left-armer after being left out in 2014 for a "timekeeping" error and an incident during his time with Sussex where he urinated on a bouncer outside a nightclub in Brighton.

Although Panesar will travel with Northants on their pre-season trip, Wakely said it was not certain he would join them as a player for the forthcoming season.

"Where we are at the moment is we are looking for him to get back to fitness. We can't make any decisions because we really don't know how he's going to be," he told BBC Radio Northampton.

"Someone of Monty Panesar's experience bowling at the level he used to with England would be useful for anyone."