County interested in Panesar return

The England left-arm spinner is the subject of an internal investigation from his employers after being fined by police for urinating on a nightclub bouncer last week.

Panesar, who left Northants in 2009 to move to the south coast, has a year left on his contract but Smith said that should he become available then the club would definitely be interested.

He said: “We’ve been approached by his agent to find out whether or not we would be willing to talk to him and a player of that ability doesn’t become available that often.

“It looks like he could be leaving Sussex and there is talk that he wants to move back to his family in Luton and if that is the case then we would have to have a look at it.

“He was at the club for a long time and he knows Rips (head coach David Ripley) very well so he would know what he was coming to but it would have to be for cricketing reasons.

“We’ve got a salary structure in place and we won’t be breaking that for anyone.

“We’ll wait and see what happens at Sussex and then we’ll go from there.”