I was at Lord's yesterday and was rather less than surprised that most of the conversation around the ground centred on a single topic, Kevin Pietersen. Now whilst I have not been a fly on the wall in the England dressing room since 2005, it is pretty clear that Pietersen has always played primarily for himself and his presence in the England team was a purely practical decision, you pick the best batsman in the land. He has performed heroics with the bat on innumerable occasions and let's face it his last day innings at the Oval in 2005 was the final reason we won back the Ashes after nigh on two decades of Australian dominance. His last century at Headingley was a majestic knock, one of his finest in an England shirt. Therein lies the crux of the problem, sadly it appears that KP likes, no actually that should be needs, to be the centre of attention. Sadly for him a certain global sporting event had started in London a few days earlier and he was knocked off the back pages and, allegedly, he was none too impressed by that.
Pietersen announced his retirement from limited overs international cricket on 31st May, citing that he could not continue in all forms of the game at the age of almost 32. The vast majority of critics saw it differently and he was accused of throwing various things from the pram as what he really wanted was to continue to play Twenty20, play in the IPL and get his big pay day. However, the ECB has a selection policy that means you are either available for all formats of international limited overs or you are not considered. Fast forward to the 11th August and KP decides to inform the world of his decision to reverse his retirement from limited overs cricket. He chooses to do this not via the ECB (his employers) but via YouTube! Now the ECB may have handled him very badly before, particularly when stripping him of the England captaincy, but this will not go down in history as a clever move. He commented "I can't wait to play in Straussy's 100th Test next week", the following day the ECB greeted his decision by dropping him from the Lord's test that started on Thursday. At the time this was largely praised as a brave decision. I wholeheartedly agreed with it, feeling that it was about time that the ego needed to be grounded. As the day went on it became clear that there was something more to the decision than giving him a slap on the wrist. If the reports that are widely circulating the media today of the exact wording of the texts he sent to South African players are true, you can understand why Andrew Strauss was "annoyed" by the saga and why he believes it will "take a long time" to rebuild trust amongst his teammates. Errr? Understatement of the century!
I am lucky to know a former England left arm spinner and despite being rather busy in between commentating for TMS and book signing yesterday was good enough to take me and one of my godsons and his father up to the media centre so Max could see the TMS box. Tuffers and I talked about the KP situation and it sounds pretty likely that Pietersen has played his last game for England.
A crying shame but then again the old adage that no one is bigger than the game is poignantly made again.
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