The fall out with KP - Alan Petersen
I suppose I’m as baffled by the whole KP situation as anyone and, purely as a cricket fan and as an observer, I offer a few uninformed thoughts.
There is no doubt that Kevin Pietersen is one of a kind and one of the best of his generation. There is an element of genius about his play that even some of the recognised greats of the game would envy. He plays shots that no one else would try, not even in this day of T20 specialists. He is pleasure to watch and, while he will continue to play in various lucrative T20 tournaments around the world, every cricket fan will be saddened that his international career has been cut short.
That said if his talent is the size of a small moon, his ego appears to equal one of the larger gas giants. He has consistently clashed with leadership/management and has been accused of disloyalty and being disruptive within the dressing room. He has used social media and an inflammatory autobiography to denigrate both management and fellow players alike and it’s clear that both his captain Alastair Cook and the new director of cricket Andrew Strauss have major personal issues with him. At the end of the day, your boss is your boss, and if he cant work with you, there’s a problem. I’ve always felt that to have dispensed with the services of one of the finest players ever to play for England, never mind a box office draw like Pietersen, he must have been an absolute nightmare and pretty much unmanageable. Having said all that, man management has never been the ECB’s forte and one wonders if some amicable solution couldn’t have been found for the sake of the paying public not to mention English cricket.
I can’t help likening the situation to that of one of my boyhood hero’s David Gower. By all accounts Bars at cricket grounds would empty when he went out to bat. He was the most fluid and graceful batsman I have ever seen but due to politics and personal differences he lost two or three years of International Cricket at the end of his career, England probably lost a couple of thousand runs and a few matches as a result and the cricket fans of the world were deprived of an outstanding talent. It would be nice to think there was a way back for KP but I suspect a line has now been drawn and everyone will move on. As a cricket fan I cannot help but feel that a game I love is the poorer for that.
Many thanks to Alan Petersen for writing this article @alanepetersen
There is no doubt that Kevin Pietersen is one of a kind and one of the best of his generation. There is an element of genius about his play that even some of the recognised greats of the game would envy. He plays shots that no one else would try, not even in this day of T20 specialists. He is pleasure to watch and, while he will continue to play in various lucrative T20 tournaments around the world, every cricket fan will be saddened that his international career has been cut short.
That said if his talent is the size of a small moon, his ego appears to equal one of the larger gas giants. He has consistently clashed with leadership/management and has been accused of disloyalty and being disruptive within the dressing room. He has used social media and an inflammatory autobiography to denigrate both management and fellow players alike and it’s clear that both his captain Alastair Cook and the new director of cricket Andrew Strauss have major personal issues with him. At the end of the day, your boss is your boss, and if he cant work with you, there’s a problem. I’ve always felt that to have dispensed with the services of one of the finest players ever to play for England, never mind a box office draw like Pietersen, he must have been an absolute nightmare and pretty much unmanageable. Having said all that, man management has never been the ECB’s forte and one wonders if some amicable solution couldn’t have been found for the sake of the paying public not to mention English cricket.
I can’t help likening the situation to that of one of my boyhood hero’s David Gower. By all accounts Bars at cricket grounds would empty when he went out to bat. He was the most fluid and graceful batsman I have ever seen but due to politics and personal differences he lost two or three years of International Cricket at the end of his career, England probably lost a couple of thousand runs and a few matches as a result and the cricket fans of the world were deprived of an outstanding talent. It would be nice to think there was a way back for KP but I suspect a line has now been drawn and everyone will move on. As a cricket fan I cannot help but feel that a game I love is the poorer for that.
Many thanks to Alan Petersen for writing this article @alanepetersen