The enigma that is Kevin Pietersen

[budgetmeansbudget]

I guess the issues are with Anderson and Cook in the current team and Prior, Swann and Strauss in previous.

The book and texts are the real killer in all this, a number of current and ex players came out and said at the time of the book's release that they could never see Pietersen playing for England again, and it doesn't appear that he will.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Pietersen only wrote the book because he was told he definitely wouldn't play for England again. So really it wasn't a factor. Then Graves announced a change in policy, in spite of the book, which Strauss reneged on even though Pietersen wrote no new book.

[Aidan11]

KP wont play and the press know this but they are loving this game of pot-stirring.

The ECB made some monumental errors the way they have handled KP and other issues so the media will keep bouncing on them until they either get what they want, or England win back the Ashes.


Even then I'm not sure it will go away.

[Arthur Crabtree]

The texts, the ECB and Strauss have accepted contained no secrets about how to get Strauss out. They accepted that the news report on the texts was made up. All we know is that Pietersen texted his mates in the SA team, and he either called Strauss a doos, or as KP says, someone else did, and KP agreed. When an ECB official said the SAn players broke a story about controversial texts, he had to apologise to them. Pietersen signed something to say he hadn't passed any info onto the SAns.

KP agreed that the ECB could have his phone, as long as they examined the phones of his team mates. Some of whom had allegedly been involved in the fake KP twitter account.

[Arthur Crabtree]

This whole thing has only obliquely been about Pietersen. That has been just evidence in disquiet over the ECB leaks and poor management.

And what KP was complaining about, is slowly getting made into policy.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Again the texts had been dealt with when Downton sacked Pietersen. And were ancient history when Strauss reneged on an agreed 'clean slate'. If it was a factor for Strauss anyway, that's a good reason why he shouldn't have taken the job. England needed someone who would make decisions on merit, not one carrying around old biases.

[Aidan11]

Cook had better pray he doesn't get a first-baller.

[sussexpob]

The whole text thing is, and always was, a joke. It was a news story that people bought, an issue created out of nothing. The mere fact that an employee anywhere in the UK would ever be told that they would face having the role in a company cut on the basis that they messaged, from a personal device, that their boss was a prat, is very worrying. Its almost surreal that an employer could act in such an abusive and bullying manner, to insist that an employee diverge on secrets and have to issue an apology based largely on hearsay. This is North Korean style management.

I think the interesting thing in all this is that, when taken at face value, for a grown man and captain of a side to take such an offence and consistently play the victim card over someone calling him one name, or agreeing when asked "don't you think the boss is xyz", is beyond belief.

[sussexpob]

Another issue about these texts that is often forgotten is the political agenda they served to so many people claiming the high ground.

1. English Performance - Got battered by South Africa in the first test, they were near 700/2 or something like that in the first test. That hit a few ego's hard, especially after England had been vastly outplayed by a pretty damn poor Pakistan side, and had scrapped a draw against an unfancied Sri Lanka side. The under current of discontent started to pour out after that first test, so there needed to be something taking the attention of the poorness of our performance away.

2. IPL - KP had asked pertinent questions about English players having the opportunity to play IPL in place of some matches, but was seriously rebuffed. The ECB are still looking like King Canute asking the waves of IPL to stop coming at them. Interestingly, not long after KP said he wouldn't mind time of and was nuclear bombed for his opinion, Andy Flower decide he couldn't be bothered with ODI's either and found someone else to do it - hypocracy. Blaming KP and publically making him fear for his career brought that line of uncomfortable questioning to a close.

3. Andrew Strauss - Was probably 20-30 matches overdue a retirement and since the turn of 2010 had failed to be of sufficient quality to be anything but a dead weight on the team. Scapegoating KP in South Africa allowed him to retire with reputation intact, as he for some reason ended another series of poor personal play by becoming a victim, and rode the crest of the wave into retirement.

[Aidan11]

The textgate story was originally broken by Lawrence Booth of the Daily Mail. His colleague Paul Newman was a big friend of KP until they fell out.

[hopeforthebest]

Never in the history of the CMS site have so many rumours, gossip, innuendos, half truths and BS been posted to support long held prejudices as I'm reading here.

[sussexpob]

Never in the history of the CMS site have so many rumours, gossip, innuendos, half truths and BS been posted to support long held prejudices as I'm reading here.

Have you been reviewing your contributions to the thread again?

[hopeforthebest]

Never in the history of the CMS site have so many rumours, gossip, innuendos, half truths and BS been posted to support long held prejudices as I'm reading here.

Have you been reviewing your contributions to the thread again?

Yes sussex, my contributions were the BS.

[sussexpob]

Joking of course.

I don't see this as "half truths though", Strauss average was appalling in the last three years of his career and was clearly on bought time, Flower and Strauss management was coming under question after a abortive 2011 World Cup, two Asian tours that we were pretty much outplayed in apart from some KP magic, and a South Africa series were, if South Africa hadn't shown mercy and declared at near 700/2, could have been the worst bowling performance in history had they continued on. IPL was becoming a major issue in the team as well, with the ECB paranoid that a mass exodus could occur and leave their prize May series in tatters.

In fact, the only reason why the IPL thing didn't happen in England is, no one wants to sign any of our test team, because they are mostly terrible IPL players.

[budgetmeansbudget]

I need one of AC's recaps of who's in which camp!