DeltaAlpha wrote:Arthur Crabtree wrote:That's a minority view. Do you not think players should be picked on merit?
A minority view maybe, but that doesn't make it intrinsically wrong, unsound or even unreasonable.
Players should be picked on the value they add to the team, not solely on merit.
So as a successful England player and a huge run scorer, KP adds little value to the team because he fell out with the captain and the coach. I have some sympathy for Cook here, because it's difficult being the captain when the team is being demolished, and I can see that he might feel vulnerable to criticism. But I can also see that criticism is deserved. If Cook decided that fitness training at the end of a long tour of overwhelming failure, rather than KP's preferred review of skills, then maybe Pietersen had a point. If, as Broad says, KP agreed to field on the boundary at Cook's request, after Trott went home, as a preferred person to absorb crowd abuse, then can Downton reasonably regard KP as being disengaged on the field. He was told to stay on the outfield!
KP's value was his runs (given the coach didn't want to utilise his cricket brain, well above average in this side). If he didn't score enough, well why start with the top run scorer for us in the series; and second top scorer in the last two years?
What value did he lack? Every single person in the touring party has said he wasn't a decisive figure in the dressing room, apart from Cook, Prior, Tim, Rankin and Borthwick. I feel sure the last two is because they haven't been interviewed on the subject. The word 'value' doesn't really suggest anything to me here.