So then. Is now a good time
to talk about Kevin?
As an England cricket fan,
I’m still annoyed about the whole Kevin Pietersen saga.
I’m surmising – which is all
anyone can do with the almost total absence of facts – that the ECB has decided
to put all its eggs in Cook’s basket, and Cook has decided that KP is too risky
to have around all those delicate eggs.
Is it personal? Do they just
not like each other? What exactly is the ‘disruption’ KP is accused of? What is
it he does (sorry: did) that the massed ranks of blue tracksuited doctors,
psychologists, mentors, coaches and managers cannot contain?
I’d love to know. I think we
all would.
Judging by the burnt bridges
and acrimonious dressing rooms strewn in his wake, he’s clearly not an easy guy
to get on with.
Text-Gate was perhaps
unforgivable, but forgiven he was. And let’s not forget that it was Cook, in
taking over from Strauss (who you sense would not have had him back, and
perhaps even walked prematurely to facilitate his return), who was instrumental
in his ‘reintegration’.
To volte-face and give up
now and have everyone sign confidentiality agreements like squabbling Hollywood
divorcees just seems ridiculous.
Ridiculous or not, they’re
sticking to it. “English supporters must move on. There isn’t going to be any
going back, that’s for sure,” says ECB chairman Giles Clarke.
Helpful. So what about the
new coach? It’s rumoured that top candidate Gary Kirsten turned the job down flat
because Pietersen (The £880k captain of the IPL side Kirsten coaches) would be
off limits. What if Cook doesn’t regain form with the bat and is himself
replaced? Is KP still banned? What about the captain after that? The coach after
that?
It’s a bizarre situation.
Cards on the table: I’ve
never been a fan of KP the bloke. He does not top my ‘cricketers-I’d-love-to-have-a-beer-and-a-chat-with’
list. But when he lets his bat do the talking, few can match him.
His destruction of Dale Steyn
at Headingly, on the brink of the Text-Gate scandal in 2012, is a perfect
illustration.
Steyn was the number one
fast bowler in the world, and that afternoon Pietersen made him look like a
third change medium pacer in a Sunday friendly. He flayed him over cover, ambled
casually down the track and biffed him back over his head, and slogged him
through cow corner like an impish schoolboy ignoring his coach’s instructions
to play straight. But the moment he owned that exchange was the shot that
followed, an exaggerated forward defensive with that characteristic big stride,
which seemed to say to Steyn: “I could have hit that anywhere I wanted. I chose
not to.” It was the most sarcastic cricket shot I’ve ever seen. Patronising and
supremely arrogant, it was the very definition of letting your bat do the
talking.
There is no one else in
English cricket whose bat has that breadth of vocabulary, and I for one will
miss it.
And I think we deserve to
know why.
- ends 508 words -
No comments:
Post a Comment