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Kevin Pietersen
- Thread starter Hiney
- Start date
That's the key for me, KP has that rat Morgan as a friend who is screaming at everyone that disagrees whilst leaking every detail of behind doors meetings and KP isn't much better.
If he just stayed quiet, and hadn't released that book I think he would be back in now
He probably would.
Dick Knights Mumm
Take me Home Falmer Road
When the Aussie fast bowlers are cartwheeling English stumps in the summer - Pietersen is going to be a massive presence whether he is in the team or not.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Great start by Strauss.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Great start by Strauss.
Man of Harveys
Well-known member
As that seasoned, well-respected authority on the great game, erm, Graham Norton was able to see - with a clarity of thought and expression that seems to elude an awful lot of people on this most boring of subjects - maybe team sports just aren't for him?
In fact the only thing he got wrong is that there's no "maybe" about it.
In fact the only thing he got wrong is that there's no "maybe" about it.
Iggle Piggle
Well-known member
- Sep 3, 2010
- 5,385
Pieterson will be in one of Morgan's boxes surveying the scene as England are 100-5 like the Roman Emperor in Gladiator. As the Sky cameras lap it up, the circus will roll on.
Unless we find out the real reason why he isn't in the team, because lets face it, it's not as if it's about a few texts and him being a bit vain, there will be a clamour for him to come back. Without knowing the detail it's difficult to know whom to back but the ECB have made a complete balls up of this one. You can't say score runs in one breath, then when he does so and more bring up 'trust' issues. It's a PR own goal. Unless he's done something like sleep with another players wife, I can't understand why they would go the route they have done. It's not as if we can't do with a batsman who can score triple centuries even if it is against Leicestershire buffet bowling.
As for the one day thing - Cook is not involved which may explain the job offer. Who knows.
Dick Knights Mumm
Take me Home Falmer Road
We will see which players an Ashes is for this summer. How many of them will be Engish batsmen ?
The book was released after he had been sacked though. Why shouldn't he give his side of the story under those circumstances?
There were 16 cricketers who failed in that Ashes tour, KP was the only one scapegoated by Cook, Downton and Co.
Man of Harveys
Well-known member
Erm, because if he really intends to try to come back at some point, slagging off everyone who's been involved to just about anyone who'll listen to him is a very stupid way of going about it? Because, it just is, isn't it.
Sorry, don't mean to sound rude but none of this is exactly rocket surgery.
I think Michael Carberry may argue with you on that point
At that stage he had been sacked though, and had been told there was no way back.
One black, one Saffar. Very Home Counties!
ROSM
Well-known member
When this first blew up after the ashes, I agreed with his removal from the team. When the book was released I also thought his exile was valid.
However these last few days I've actually started to feel some sympathy for him (although reduced slightly by his own behaviour and piers Morgan)
[MENTION=31]El Presidente[/MENTION] presents a compelling case that is difficult to read and still believe afterwards that keeping kp from the team is the right thing to do
There will be players who saw the efforts that prior went to in order to get kp back into the team and then have it thrown back in his face and won't make the effort. But they'll have to consider that as it's a home test series they can put up with him for the good of the team performance
However these last few days I've actually started to feel some sympathy for him (although reduced slightly by his own behaviour and piers Morgan)
[MENTION=31]El Presidente[/MENTION] presents a compelling case that is difficult to read and still believe afterwards that keeping kp from the team is the right thing to do
There will be players who saw the efforts that prior went to in order to get kp back into the team and then have it thrown back in his face and won't make the effort. But they'll have to consider that as it's a home test series they can put up with him for the good of the team performance
Dick Knights Mumm
Take me Home Falmer Road
I don't watch that much cricket - but when going to watch England over the last decade Pietersen is a player to actively look forward to seeing. I am sure he is a difficult bloke and all that - and that will be an understatement - but we are hardly blessed with riches that will make people excited about English cricket.
Give us the full details or put him in the team.
Give us the full details or put him in the team.
Geestar
New member
Seems to me to be similar to Clarkson....your ego can get in the way of what you do best.
F#@" him and forget him...no need for that in our camp
F#@" him and forget him...no need for that in our camp
Because he harboured desires of a return?
But as neither of us know's what he was like in Australia in the dressing room, he may not have been made a scapegoat.
Quite honestly IMO, given his previous form for being 'disruptive' and subsequent book, I'm not sure scapegoat comes into it.
Fair enough, let's agree to disagree.
Man of Harveys
Well-known member
So that's the equivalent of telling the boss what you think of him on your last day - fun and we've all considered it but always unwise. Because you never know, right? So non-moronic, non-egomaniacs keep their mouth shut and play nice, even if it's through gritted teeth.
But he's also a public figure. And he couldn't appear on enough chat shows to carry on washing his dirty laundry in public.
And some people still wonder why he's entirely frozen out? It's really a no-brainer. As is he.
It took Paul Downton a month to fatally and irrevocably destroy his authority by making an absurd decision which defied all logic, and which he was entirely unable to explain in public.
Andrew Strauss has managed it in just two days.
Very few people were calling for the immediate restoration of Kevin Pietersen to the England side. The desire was only for natural justice: for Pietersen to be treated in an identical manner to any other player – or if not, to have the reasons properly and frankly explained.
For the last fifteen months, Andrew Strauss and Tom Harrison watched from the sidelines as the ECB tore English cricket apart through a combination of arrogant mendacity and moral corruption. They observed everything which went wrong, and then, after due deliberation, decided to do exactly the same thing again.
At the heart of today’s events lies the very same crime as was committed in February 2014 – to judge that the English cricketing public deserved no explanation for the ECB’s decision-making.
Andrew Strauss promised “some really honest and open conversation about Kevin Pietersen”, and then proceeded to offer not one shred of honesty. He will exclude Pietersen because of a breach of trust, but will not say what that means or what it involves.
What is trust, in the context of a cricket team? What can they not trust Pietersen to do, or trust not to do? How does that trust affect the way the team performs? As Pietersen has given his all – and sacrificed large pay-cheques – to return to the side, how likely would he be to breach trust in a meaningful way during a final year in England whites?
And how could Pietersen be trusted with an ODI advisory role, but not to hit cricket balls for runs?
Strauss believes we have no right to know the answers to any of these questions. As ever, the ECB expect us to shut up and keep buying the tickets.
On the BBC, Jonathan Agnew asked Strauss to clarify exactly what the “trust issues” with Pietersen are. Strauss replied by saying:
A number of issues over a long period of time. I don’t need to spell them out for you Aggers, you’ve been there all the way through it.
Which is fine, as long as they only person who needs to know is the BBC cricket correspondent. Alas, further probing from the interviewer came there none. Nor was Strauss subjected to forensic questioning during his principal TV interview, conducted by his friends at Sky Sports, who until one week ago were also Strauss’s employers. Talk about incestuous.
With one hand the ECB speak of reconnecting with supporters while with the other, they patronise, dissemble, and insult our intelligence. According to chief executive Tom Harrison:
This has been a tricky issue. What we’re focussing on now is the future of English cricket. There’s a sense of excitement about where we can take English cricket in the years to come.
Feeling excited, huh? Do they really think we’ll swallow this nonsense? Or do they simply not care? I’m not sure which is worse.
Strauss’s silence entitles to us to draw our own conclusions. Here are mine. The ECB would rather kill cricket stone dead then cede one inch to the Great Unwashed. They care for nothing except the gratification of their spite, vindictiveness and pride.
Strauss identifies the long history of distrust between him and Pietersen. Yet the pair had no dealings with each other between the time of Pietersen’s “rehabilitation” after Textgate, when the slate was officially wiped clean, and Pietersen’s sacking in February 2014. Downton’s official reason for the dismissal was Pietersen’s “disinterest and disengagement”. So which is it?The trust or the disengagement? Is Strauss moving the goalposts and retrospectively re-punishing Pietersen over charges for which he’s already served his time?
Tom Harrison alluded to Pietersen’s book. This was written after Pietersen was fired. Was he therefore sacked for something he did after he was sacked? Would he have won back his place had he not written it? As Pietersen made no significant criticism of any current England player in his autobiography, what difference does it make anyway?
But in that volume Pietersen did attack the ECB – and there’s the rub. When they speak of trust and loyalty, they mean loyalty to the ECB itself, as a corporate entity – which is rather different from the England cricket team.
The Lord’s top brass and their friends in the press will no doubt dismiss today’s furore as the frothing of ignorant, internet-addicted lunatics. Which is why two of the most telling remarks have come from that well-known keyboard warrior and cricket outsider, Alec Stewart.
Kevin is entitled to feel let down a little bit by the ECB following the comments of the incoming chairman, Colin Graves, when he said six or seven weeks or so ago the slate had been wiped clean, to find himself a county, score runs and he’d be considered, or words to that effect. Which Kevin has done: he’s had two phone conversations with the incoming chairman, so it wasn’t a misinterpretation just from that Gary Richardson [BBC Radio] Sunday morning sports show.
I’d like to know who at the ECB doesn’t trust him, because from when that decision was made 14, 15, 16 months ago, there is now a new chairman, new chief executive, new director of cricket and there now will be a new coach, so which individual or individuals don’t trust him?
Yesterday, Kevin Pietersen said:
I had two phone conversations with Colin Graves and he was crystal clear in saying I had to get a county, score runs and that there was a clean slate. He said that when he comes in as chairman he wants the best players playing for England. He told me that on the phone in two separate conversations. He also repeated it to national newspapers.
[At the meeting with Strauss] I asked: “Who doesn’t trust me? You have a new chairman, a new CEO, we have spent the last 10 minutes sorting out our differences like adults. Let’s go through the batting order.”
I rattled off names. [Strauss] could not give me any names. He said it is a broader thing and not just the players.
Strauss could name no players who didn’t trust Pietersen, because he could only have said – at a pinch – James Anderson and Alastair Cook. That’s the same Alastair Cook who is a living embodiment of trust – so trustworthy in fact, that he ran to Andy Flower to tell tales about Pietersen after the infamous Melbourne team meeting. This fact was not cooked up by rabid blogs but disclosed by the ECB in the ‘dossier’ last October’.
So why did Graves’s pledges come to nothing? Here’s a hypothesis. Graves made the promise in good faith, but hadn’t accounted for the fragile ego of Alastair Cook, who threw a tantrum at the prospect of not getting his way. Graves was then persuaded that, with the Ashes looming and Cook still under pressure, nothing should be allowed to disturb the Dear Leader’s equilibrium.
In the same way that most general elections, whatever the polls, usually result in a Conservative victory, so every dispute in English cricket results in Alastair Cook getting what he wants. Once again, the priorities of English cricket must be inverted from sane principles. Everything must revolve around Cook and serve his best interests. Heaven forfend that any irritant be borne by this pampered, indulged, Little Lord Faunterloy.
What chance now that Jason Gillespie leaves an excellent job to walk into this mess? England have just lost the best coach they will never have. Even if Dizzy is prepared to take charge of a team for which he can’t pick the best players for unknown political reasons, could he possibly stomach the idea of churning out the ludicrous party line in public? Shares in Paul Farbrace rose sharply at today’s news.
Technically, Strauss has not entirely ruled out the possibility of Pietersen playing for England again, at some unspecified point in the future – but not this summer. A clumsy piece of rubbing further salt into the wound, Strauss has constructed a convoluted position which in its ambiguity is guaranteed to cause further trouble. If Pietersen continues to score runs, and England are in serious Ashes jeopardy, what can Strauss say?
In the final analysis you can only admire the ECB’s ingenuity. For fifteen months, the Pietersen saga has wreaked immense damage to English cricket. Somehow, Colin Graves, Tom Harrison and Andrew Strauss have now pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of making it even worse. Astonishingly, they’ve sunk the ECB’s reputation even lower. That takes a special kind of skill.
When Downton was sent packing, we began to harbour faint hopes of a new dawn at the ECB. Now look at it. They can’t even sack people properly. First Peter Moores finds out he’s been fired by reading about it on the internet – during an England match – because no one at Lord’s could be bothered to tell him in person. Then the ECB chairman promises Pietersen he can be re-selected, at the cost of forfeiting lucrative contracts, only to change his mind. All within four days. These guys are making Giles Clarke look good.
When Graves offered Pietersen an olive branch, and Harrison dismissed Paul Downton, the ECB gave themselves a second chance. A chance to repair the alienation of supporters. A chance to reunite the team with the public. A chance to show that English cricket belongs to everyone.
That chance was squandered, and they may never get another. By their actions today, the ECB have made their choice abundantly clear. Cricket belongs to them, not to us. It is their personal property, to use, abuse, and exploit as they wish. Cricket is none of our business.
The ECB speak trenchantly about trust. They have lost the public’s forever.