Pietersen at it again.

[The Large One]

[tweet]520131088229076992[/tweet]

 

[keaton]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cr...o-parody-Kevin-Pietersen-Twitter-account.html

Senior players clearly lied about this. I don't think Alec Stewart would be in the business of defending KP for any other agenda.

And why didn't the ECB take action?

And Alec Stewart is Matt Prior's agent so if anything he should against KP.

 

[spring hall convert]

And you are being spectacularly one-eyed about the whole affair. Your chosen time period of 2009-Jan 2014 includes some of the biggest successes and best performances English cricket has ever known.

We don't know the detail of what went on in the dressing room but it was bound to be an extremely challenging environment with the established players dominating the scene.

Broad seems to be generally a massive knob. Highly aggressive and selfish. Very good at winning cricket matches.
Anderson & Prior similarly high achieving and demanding individuals.
Swann - a bit different. Apparently "nicer" but with a sharp tongue and no doubt when number one bowler in the world a decent sized ego.
KP - without question, by far the biggest **** of the lot. Tolerated while winning matches consistently. Jettisoned when focus and performances started to wane.

I don't see a massive problem.

The problem is that the ECB have acted mendaciously. They've treated Pietersen abysmally and continually acted with double standards. And all this after they made Pietersen go though the utterly humilating reintegration process. I don't trust the institution as it stands to get it right with the future management of players. They have a yes man as coach and a yes man as captain, there is no vehicle in my eyes for voicing dissent. How can that be good for the future of English cricket?

I maintain that the team that went to No.1 actually underachieved. As a unit it's probably the best England have ever had.

 

[Moshe Gariani]

The problem is that the ECB have acted mendaciously. They've treated Pietersen abysmally and continually acted with double standards. And all this after they made Pietersen go though the utterly humilating reintegration process. I don't trust the institution as it stands to get it right with the future management of players. They have a yes man as coach and a yes man as captain, there is no vehicle in my eyes for voicing dissent. How can that be good for the future of English cricket?

I maintain that the team that went to No.1 actually underachieved. As a unit it's probably the best England have ever had.

This is as close to complete nonsense as it is possible to get. The Team England set-up can be accused of lots of things but paying insufficient attention to the "non-cricket" aspects is not a charge that fits the evidence.

Of course they have not, as an organisation or as individuals, achieved perfection. Who ever does that? They have, however, got a huge amount right and continue to do so.

To say that the team which became the most successful England side in the modern era "underachieved" is laughable and just underlines the extent to which the management and players involved "cannot win".

They were definitely not the best players of all time. Not the fastest bowlers. No modern day mystery spinner. Not the best wicketkeeper. No Botham/Flintoff replacement. A very, very good set of players but one that relied on preparation, planning and teamwork as much as they did raw talent.

 

[keaton]

[tweet]520131088229076992[/tweet]

And Swann says he did not have access to the account.

Interesting how neither of them state that they had nothing to do with it or denied passing anything on to person behind it. They've all learned well from Flower and the ECB

 

[Guinness Boy]

You are completely missing the point. Pietersen is saying that particular players who were not part of the cabal were singled out for treatment. Pietersen himself was not a victim (as I expect the cabal of senior players considered him too important to the team.)

This was not with the intention of improving performance, it was with the intention of maintaining the positions of the senior players in the team.

Shahzad, Tremlett and Trott have all to an extent backed Pietersen here.

And you are being spectacularly one-eyed about the whole affair. Your chosen time period of 2009-Jan 2014 includes some of the biggest successes and best performances English cricket has ever known.

We don't know the detail of what went on in the dressing room but it was bound to be an extremely challenging environment with the established players dominating the scene.

Broad seems to be generally a massive knob. Highly aggressive and selfish. Very good at winning cricket matches.
Anderson & Prior similarly high achieving and demanding individuals.
Swann - a bit different. Apparently "nicer" but with a sharp tongue and no doubt when number one bowler in the world a decent sized ego.
KP - without question, by far the biggest **** of the lot. Tolerated while winning matches consistently. Jettisoned when focus and performances started to wane.

I don't see a massive problem.

Quite. It's not as if we were losing matches when these allegations were taking place. It is interesting that they were only made public when we started losing and KP was removed from the team. If you're going to be a whistle blower it's best to do so from a position of strength no? Or perhaps Pietersen enjoyed the banter just fine when we were winning.

 

[Bold Seagull]

I don't see a massive problem.

The writing was on the wall at the end of 2011 with the 3-0 humiliation at the hands of Pakistan.

The massive problem is that this England team was capable, and should have been able to maintain it's status of one of the 2 top test teams in the world - but has massively failed to do that.

To then be humiliated in Australia, and lets be clear it was an historic humiliation, followed by losing a test series at home to Sri Lanka is frankly unacceptable.

The massive problem, as we're now beginning to piece together is that the team has been unable to evolve because of what has been going on. We've wondered why so many new and young players have struggled so badly - some not good enough, but some destroyed by what has been going on like Steve Finn.

Australia over the years managed to keep together a team spirit and evolve the side. Same as South Africa who've remained top of the test rankings for a long time. We on the other hand appear to self destruct in the same manner as India - and it's just not acceptable that this has happened in this way.

 

[spring hall convert]

This is as close to complete nonsense as it is possible to get. The Team England set-up can be accused of lots of things but paying insufficient attention to the "non-cricket" aspects is not a charge that fits the evidence.

Of course they have not, as an organisation or as individuals, achieved perfection. Who ever does that? They have, however, got a huge amount right and continue to do so.

To say that the team which became the most successful England side in the modern era "underachieved" is laughable and just underlines the extent to which the management and players involved "cannot win".

They were definitely not the best players of all time. Not the fastest bowlers. No modern day mystery spinner. Not the best wicketkeeper. No Botham/Flintoff replacement. A very, very good set of players but one that relied on preparation, planning and teamwork as much as they did raw talent.

We're probably not going to find common ground here, it is my belief that team should have stayed at number 1 or 2 for a greater length of time. The only other really decent side out there were the South Africans and I thought man for man they were marginally better than us. I'd argue we should probably still be there now.

They were very good on the ascent to no.1. However, look at what happened to results after that point, we didn't pick up on the warning signs but they were there, England had a very poor 18 months resulting in the Ashes humilation to an Australian team that man for man weren't better than us. We were all guilty of judging that period of 18 months prior to that Ashes series in the context of past performances. There were people on here saying something was wrong in the successful summer Ashes and I'm afraid to say I shouted them down.

Pietersen and others are now telling us that there was something wrong, Pietersen clearly voiced his concerns here and they fell on deaf ears. I maintain it was the complacency of the system more than anything else that led to the last Ashes whitewash.

The ECB and Flower rightly recieved a lot of credit when things were going well. However, the bigger test was to pick up on the signals that all wasn't right prior to the whitewash.

 

[spring hall convert]

Quite. It's not as if we were losing matches when these allegations were taking place. It is interesting that they were only made public when we started losing and KP was removed from the team. If you're going to be a whistle blower it's best to do so from a position of strength no? Or perhaps Pietersen enjoyed the banter just fine when we were winning.

We were underperforming for a long time after going to number 1. It was a gradual decline and the skill of our senior players got us out of a lot of self-inflicted holes. If you genuinely look at perormances post that 5-0 whitewash against the Indians you will see a gradual decline to the Ashes humiliation.

Why were we continually losing the first tests of series we'd go on to win? There was a culture of extreme complacency.

The Australian side that we beat 3-0 is probably the worst they have ever sent over here. They weren't fit to wear the shirt.

 

[Moshe Gariani]

We were underperforming for a long time after going to number 1. It was a gradual decline and the skill of our senior players got us out of a lot of self-inflicted holes. If you genuinely look at perormances post that 5-0 whitewash against the Indians you will see a gradual decline to the Ashes humiliation.

Why were we continually losing the first tests of series we'd go on to win? There was a culture of extreme complacency.

The Australian side that we beat 3-0 is probably the worst they have ever sent over here. They weren't fit to wear the shirt.

Common ground would be based on an acceptance that nothing is ever quite as bad or quite as good as it seems in the short run and that there is far more information and misinformation in the public domain than is really helpful. It feeds the 24/7/365 global media frenzy for negative news stories and fuels supporters who swing far too quickly from "brilliant" to "rubbish" about groups of players and managers...

I'm not saying that the ECB and their staff have got everything right, far from it.

I was at a semi-public forum last week where they were very open about how Steve Finn had been mishandled. The main issue for him was that despite his brilliant performance the opinion of the medical experts was that his body would not stand up to the strain of continuous international cricket. So they initiated a period of strength and conditioning work with the best of intentions but a completely unacceptable outcome i.e. he has yet to regain his bowling form since. It is, however, the sort of "mistake" that happens... there is a lot of luck in sport and the interventions of coaches and support staff will occasionally coincide with a loss of form regardless of how expert, and normally helpful, is the work being done. You have to balance Finn's experience against the results of a lot of similar work that has been done with other players to improve the England team performance so much in the past decade compared to the previous 40 years.

 

[spring hall convert]

Common ground would be based on an acceptance that nothing is ever quite as bad or quite as good as it seems in the short run and that there is far more information and misinformation in the public domain than is really helpful. It feeds the 24/7/365 global media frenzy for negative news stories and fuels supporters who swing far too quickly from "brilliant" to "rubbish" about groups of players and managers...

I'm not saying that the ECB and their staff have got everything right, far from it.

I was at a semi-public forum last week where they were very open about how Steve Finn had been mishandled. The main issue for him was that despite his brilliant performance the opinion of the medical experts was that his body would not stand up to the strain of continuous international cricket. So they initiated a period of strength and conditioning work with the best of intentions but a completely unacceptable outcome i.e. he has yet to regain his bowling form since. It is, however, the sort of "mistake" that happens... there is a lot of luck in sport and the interventions of coaches and support staff will occasionally coincide with a loss of form regardless of how expert, and normally helpful, is the work being done. You have to balance Finn's experience against the results of a lot of similar work that has been done with other players to improve the England team performance so much in the past decade compared to the previous 40 years.

Thanks for the infomation about Finn, perhaps he's a bad example here. The specifics of that situation seem complex, I recall we tried similar tinkering with Anderson, I suppose it's pretty high profile when it doesn't work but barely recieves recognition when it does.

My key point is that there was mounting evidence in performance and results that something wasn't right in the 18 months/ 2 years before the last Ashes series. It doesn't appear that the structure and atmosphere was correct to identify and do something about it. Whose responsibility was it to be asking the difficult questions during this period?

 

[Moshe Gariani]

My key point is that there was mounting evidence in performance and results that something wasn't right in the 18 months/ 2 years before the last Ashes series. It doesn't appear that the structure and atmosphere was correct to identify and do something about it. Whose responsibility was it to be asking the difficult questions during this period?

This is the million dollar question. The players who took us to number one in the world became "big time" in a way that they hadn't been on the way up... Prior, Swann, Anderson, Broad spring to mind along with KP who had always been that way inclined.

In response, new goals were set and individual players were encouraged to be open and honest in their dealings with each other and the staff as they sought to find ways to keep their drive and hunger to stay at the top. But key individual and team performances nevertheless went into a downward spiral. Injuries physical and mental started to appear where they hadn't done for a while. All of the best intentions and attempts at "man management" and "maintaining the performance environment" failed to stop the rot....

Now we are near the start of a new cycle with a different mix of players and a coach having his second crack at it. Things won't be done very differently. There is a limit to how differently it can be done. Win and you're a great coach and have found the ideal approach to managing players and support staff. Lose and you're a crap coach who hasn't got a clue about how to manage players and support staff.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Now we are near the start of a new cycle with a different mix of players and a coach having his second crack at it. Things won't be done very differently. There is a limit to how differently it can be done. Win and you're a great coach and have found the ideal approach to managing players and support staff. Lose and you're a crap coach who hasn't got a clue about how to manage players and support staff.

This is a real losing approach to dealing with an international side. It isn't all about winning and the coach is great - there have been serious questions over England's tactics, selections and performances even when they were winning - but nothing was done.

They have more support staff involved than ever before. I was upset with this team long before the debacle in Australia. It is to easy to say 'oh it's sport, one minute your good, next thing it's bad - it's a cycle' that is the talk of failure. For too long from tactics in the field to selection and management the setup has been reactive rather than proactive.

There is enough people involved to have spotted this long before we scrapped through a dreadful (winning) performance at home to Australia. The series away against Pakistan and New Zealand had the writing on the wall - but the status quo remained.

The overall failure is that it took us reaching absolute rock bottom before pressing the panic button. It didn't have to be this cycle. This could have been addressed earlier and should have been.

You might think it's just a natural part of sport, but it isn't. South Africa have played 28 series since 2006 and lost just 2 (both to Australia). Now they don't play as many test matches as us, but that is nearly a decade of consistency. Same as Australia for 20 years. What makes me so angry about all this, is that this was our chance to grab a period of dominance in test cricket. Instead its gone almost as quickly as it arrived.

 

[spring hall convert]

This is the million dollar question. The players who took us to number one in the world became "big time" in a way that they hadn't been on the way up... Prior, Swann, Anderson, Broad spring to mind along with KP who had always been that way inclined.

In response, new goals were set and individual players were encouraged to be open and honest in their dealings with each other and the staff as they sought to find ways to keep their drive and hunger to stay at the top. But key individual and team performances nevertheless went into a downward spiral. Injuries physical and mental started to appear where they hadn't done for a while. All of the best intentions and attempts at "man management" and "maintaining the performance environment" failed to stop the rot....

Now we are near the start of a new cycle with a different mix of players and a coach having his second crack at it. Things won't be done very differently. There is a limit to how differently it can be done. Win and you're a great coach and have found the ideal approach to managing players and support staff. Lose and you're a crap coach who hasn't got a clue about how to manage players and support staff.

So that leaves some very big unanswered questions for me.

Did the ECB seek to shift a disproportionate level of blame onto KP's shoulders because it suited the direction that we were going in?

What has changed to make Peter Moores the right man to be England coach now?

Are the ECB in the business of appointing "yes men" in key positions? Who is ultimately responsible for assessing the performance of the current England team and asking difficult questions of the management team and senior players if they need asking?

Should Andy Flower still be involved in the England set up?

How confident are we that the England dressing room is set up in the best possible way for welcoming and nurturing talent?

This whole business is far, far bigger than KP, regardless of KP's motives in shining a light on it.

 

[spring hall convert]

The overall failure is that it took us reaching absolute rock bottom before pressing the panic button. It didn't have to be this cycle. This could have been addressed earlier and should have been.

You might think it's just a natural part of sport, but it isn't. South Africa have played 28 series since 2006 and lost just 2 (both to Australia). Now they don't play as many test matches as us, but that is nearly a decade of consistency. Same as Australia for 20 years. What makes me so angry about all this, is that this was our chance to grab a period of dominance in test cricket. Instead its gone almost as quickly as it arrived.

In fairness to you, you were one of the few that spotted it at the time, your last paragraph sums up my feeling. Evolution not revolution was the key, we mucked it up big time. To try and pin that on one man was utterly ridiculous and the ECB have no one but themselves to blame for creating an utterly avoidable controversy. They made this book 10 times more relevant and explosive than it needed to be.

 

[Moshe Gariani]

You might think it's just a natural part of sport, but it isn't. South Africa have played 28 series since 2006 and lost just 2 (both to Australia). Now they don't play as many test matches as us, but that is nearly a decade of consistency. Same as Australia for 20 years. What makes me so angry about all this, is that this was our chance to grab a period of dominance in test cricket. Instead its gone almost as quickly as it arrived.

South Africa is an exceptionally strong cricketing nation. Same for Australia. Their climates, combined with school and club sport systems, produce cricketers.

England have been mediocre by international standards for large parts of cricket history.

The ECB have made a decent job of harnessing the benefits offered by a newly professional set up (funded by Sky money) over the past 15 years or so. We reached number one without having a team of greats (in comparison with the truly dominant Australian and West Indian sides) and by integrating a diverse mix of characters.

The methods that got England to number one are the same ones being used now. There is no magic wand that would have kept that England team at the top semi-permanently. "Tactics, selections and performances" are largely dictated by players and their form.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Rubbish! Rubbish! Rubbish! Do you really think it makes people perform better by shouting at them when they make a mistake? Dear me - all it does is make the one who shouts feel better for a moment. Good leaders inspire, they don't frighten. Your bowler and skipper when you were 13 should be banned - dreadful attitude. How many kids did they put off playing for ever I wonder?

Nomads even before the Spen Cama money prepared players for high level League cricket. I was comfortably the worst player in the team and yet it improved me. I have been playing village cricket since 1989 so it certainly didn't put me off.

I once went on one of those "Red Letter Days" experience things which was a day with Mike Gatting at Lords. At the time I was a player in the Sunday Seconds. When we were discussing our 'codes' over a lunchtime pint and burger in the Tavern I mentioned that most in our team walked, all umpired with varying degrees of competence, that fielding mistakes were never deliberately mentioned or criticised and that the batting order revolved around everyone getting a game. He looked horrified.

I know there have been England (and Sussex) players who have had depression - a true mental illness - but I'm not sure why the bowler of a dropped chance giving you stick is worse than 30,000 drunk, baying Aussies or a packed Wanderers giving you exactly the same advice. Especially when you're being handsomely rewarded.

 

[Leekbrookgull]

So how different is this?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/11149869/Alec-Stewart-I-was-told-Stuart-Broad-Graeme-Swann-and-Tim-Bresnan-had-access-to-parody-Kevin-Pietersen-Twitter-account.html

No difference really,but have they done this after K/P actions re-South Africa ?

 

[Billy the Fish]

No difference really,but have they done this after K/P actions re-South Africa ?

I'm pretty sure the twitter account was running first. I think that's why he ended up sending the texts about Strauss - because he was angry nothing was done about the twitter account.

Just found a good piece from Michael Vaughan in the aussie press
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/parody-twitter-account-hit-kevin-pietersen-where-it-hurts-20141008-10rn7n.html?skin=text-only

 

[spring hall convert]

The twitter account was before "textgate" wasn't it?