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KP goes down fighting
By Will last year, mid-January, 4 Comments »
If I wasn’t finding all this so entertaining, I’d have some degree of sympathy towards Pietersen. And in a career heaving with controversies and out-of-joint noses, not many people, I’d wager, have afforded him the slightest slice of empathy. He’s a villain, a hero, a saviour and a swine rolled into one. The best players can be afforded some leeway, but not as captain.
His revelations in the News of the World today either showed he had most of the key players behind him, or that he’s a little naive – perhaps even blinkered. Flintoff, he says, told him to stay. So did Harmison. Collingwood, too. And when the ECB phoned him to say “we accept your resignation”, he was genuinely stunned.
Theories surrounding this debacle are floating around like flotsam and jetsam, and I don’t really want to analyse each and every one. We’ll never know for certain what happened. But it seems increasingly likely, as I first suspected, that his brash leadership won him no favours with the board. The ECB like a captain and coach to get on with it, but only on their terms. English cricket has tried to reinvent itself in the past decade, but the stuffy air of traditionalism still pervades the hallways like a bad smell. Pietersen just didn’t cut it for them. He’s made from the wrong (or right) stuff.
That isn’t to say he’s faultless; his decision to approach Giles Clarke about his thoughts on Peter Moores was like a Corporal having a problem with his Sergeant and instead of approaching the Regimental Sergeant Major, he rings Gordon Brown. I’m not comparing Clarke to Brown, although the BS levels are certainly on a par.
The juiciest question remains unanswered, and we’ll probably never find out. Still, it’s fun to ponder. Who leaked this into the public domain?
Answers on a postcard, or in a comment below.
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