KP

Two diametrically opposing stories on KP's book.

On cricinfo : "Pietersen immune from ECB action over book" www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/story/786579.html

In The Guardian: "Kevin Pietersen book: ECB says action still possible over confidentiality" www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/oct/02/kevin-pietersen-book-ecb-action-confidentiality


Having read both stories, I'd back The Guardian, which has troubled itself to follow the tiresome and old-fashioned Fleet Street practice of checking with both parties and speaking to the ECB, whereas Cricinfo has not.

The Daily Telegraph interview makes pretty unappetising reading. Hard to believe that a man so thin-skinned should ever have sought a career in a team game; not so hard to believe that a man so prone to hero worship (see the remarks about Duncan Fletcher and Gary Kirsten) should veer off to the other extreme when the authority figure is more critical of him.

What's true and what isn't? Is Matt Prior a two-faced assassin, driving the knife in where a tongue-tied, embarrassed Alastair Cook would not? Are bowlers really the unacknowledged legislators of the dressing-room, demanding fear and obeisance? Would the revelation that a parody Twitter account of pompous statements was put together by members of the same team be likely to reduce a senior player to a condition of being "..completely broken, absolutely finished, mentally shot"? All these things happen in Pietersen world and there may be some truth in some of them, or it may be that this is the world view of someone who is completely unequipped to cope with the needs of a team, quite devoid of that empathy that understands that so-and-so can be a bit of an arse but is also vital to the team and has his own set of needs and priorities.

At it's simplest, Pietersen's story is that of the great talent, the blazing fire, that is above and beyond the petty rules that enshroud and chain more earthbound spirits; however life is not quite so simple and cricket is a very good game for bringing people out of the clouds and confronting their own mortality. No doubt at times he was treated harshly, but then he had set the bar so high for himself that it would inevitably encourage others, particularly more lineal thinkers, to raise their own standards for his conduct. No doubt too that he probably was the subject of dressing-room stunts, because he took himself so seriously and cultivated this Ayn Rand-ish persona, and all around the country there are club players who can think of similar characters and incidents. The problem is that the media focus was so relentlessly strong that successive coaches and captains stepped away from these issues while the team was successful, and their own managers  were too weak, and again too impressed by the success, to bear down upon them. Perhaps a Fletcher/Vaughan combination could have sorted it out, but it was that same combination that encouraged Pietersen to live in his own fantasy world.

Whatever the truth, the fact is that it's over now; Pietersen has passed his peak and will probably play a few more T20 tournaments and then try to cope with the awful disappointment of no longer being the star attraction;Prior is facing up to the reality of no longer having a central contract and coping with a long recovery from injury at a relatively advanced cricketing age; Cook is as inarticulate as ever and probably not much more tactically aware; only Flower sits above the wreckage, with his technical post with the ECB secure.

Swann has replied describing it as a work of fiction and saying that the attack on prior is despite prior being the one who fought tooth and nail to keep KP.

And the more that leaks out from the book as the evening goes on, the fiestier it gets.

The text messages between KP and Prior detailed in the book will cause the Sussex man major embarrassment.

And the reminder that in 2011 Swann, Anderson, Broad and Prior all put themselves up for the IPL auction and didn't attract a single offer between them while KP commanded an astronomical sum is timely. The implication that there was a humungous amount of envy running around the England dressing room is difficult to dispute and, given the vast sums involved, it would only be human nature.

But one begins to see why Prior is fighting against the ECB ban on players responding to the book : at the moment it looks like 40-love to Pietersen and you can understand why Matt is desperate  to volley the ball back over the net, even if his dignity would be better served by retiring from the court.

Don't see how anyone can ignore the book , one way or another. The sage of cricinfo has now read it and says: "this is a must-read book. It is riveting. It is illuminating. It is audacious. It is outrageous.But most of all it is sad because talents like Pietersen come along all too rarely. Because cricket, in the UK in particular, is crying out for entertaining, box-office players to win back supporters and inspire the next generation. Because, with a bit more imagination, a bit more humility, a bit more carrot and a bit less stick, Pietersen could still be playing for England."

Pietersen has said and done some stupid things. But it really does appear thathe has been as much sinned against as sinning. Some of the allegations against him that have become accepted as fact turn out to be completely untrue in his account. He did not issue an ultimatum and demand the sacking of Peter Moores. He offered to stand down as captain and return to the ranks under Moores and another captain. The ECB wasn't having that and briefed it was 'him or me' in order to allow them to get rid of both men. He never used the word 'doos' in a text message or advised the South Africans on how to dismiss any England player. He was not the instigator of the anti-Flower mood in the secret team meeting after Melbourne,which was convened by Prior (who had just been dropped from the team,of course). And so on and so on.

Even if you're one of those England "supporters" who has spent the last ten years hating Pietersen you don't have to chage your mind about him to agree with Dobell's conclusion that "Although angry and full of bombast, Kevin Pietersen's book should unsettle English cricket. If even some of his claims are true, the culture within the England camp has been destructive for a long time."

The one thing anybody who cares about English cricket cannnot do is to ignore what he says.

While a book of this nature can only reek of sour grapes, from what I've read so far, it is the abusive, bullying
culture within the England team that rankles led by Anderson, Swann, Broad and Prior - each with their differing
roles.

Like some school gang the weak were picked on and if you didn't fit into this so-called England Team Culture, you were
given the cold-shoulder.

Obviously, KP did not fit in as he was by far the most talented player and why the parody twitter account was
created in an attempt to knock him down a notch.

Several commentators have pointed out that players like Steven Finn were picked on and his loss of confidence can
well be attributed in part to the verbal abuse from Swann and Co. How many other players who 'never made the England
grade' suffered in a similar way. 

This gang mentality it seems was encouraged by Flower who placed his seamers on a pedestal. They could do no wrong.
And this additional sense of power led to an exaggeration of the bullying mentality.

Oh dear, fb. Oh dear, oh dear. You clearly are in the camp that holds 'How can you tell when Pietersen is lying? Answer: when his lips move.'

What campaign against the ECB is that - the one to try to persuade them to give us a more sensible fixture schedule for 2015, which Sussex has also asked for?

That is a quite seperate issue from the running of Team England, as you know full well.

You usually address the issues with a pretty acute eye but you appear to have a total blind spot on this one. Simply because you don't like KP, you have exhorted the rest of us to "just ignore" everything he says. Well sorry, but we're not ostriches!