Kevin Pietersen: A big gamble that failed
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
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When Kevin Pietersen was appointed England captain, it seemed to be an enormous gamble that was likely to end in tears. Nobody, though, could have predicted the speed with which his captaincy has imploded, nor the scale of the fallout, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Once the story gathered pace that Pietersen could not work with Moores, neither went out of his way to deny the rift or reaffirm the promises of co-operation that had accompanied Pietersen’s elevation to the top job. Moores said nothing, while Pietersen merely said that the situation was “unhealthy” and needed resolving quickly. Pietersen had, in effect, flexed his muscles, sure of his own power. Pietersen’s mistake was to stay on holiday in South Africa instead of returning when the rift became public. By not coming home at the first opportunity, his attitude towards the captaincy was revealed as casual.
Kevin Pietersen has learned the hard way that he can't just go through his career taking people on. As England captain, you need savvy, to be streetwise and politically astute. You have to choose the right time to pick your fights and this was not the right time, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.
The ECB wouldn't go all the way by giving him the coaching team he wanted. To do so would have made Pietersen the most powerful England skipper there has ever been and they weren't prepared to do that because he didn't understand the political game or how to play it.
With six months until the Ashes, England have no coach, a captain who can't make the one-day side and a general air of chaos, writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian.
What a mess. And how sad for English cricket that a year containing a home Ashes series has begun in such chaos. You have to ask why the men in suits couldn't see this situation coming. The moment Kevin Pietersen asked for his so-called clear-the-air meeting with Peter Moores last summer, the penny should have dropped at the England and Wales Cricket Board: the relationship between captain and coach was clearly a situation that needed monitoring, on a game-by-game basis, from the word go. Can they honestly say this has happened?
The feud between the former England captain and coach may have been unseemly but perhaps it was for the best, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.
A global view, then, might be that English cricket is a fiasco. The reality, however, which will be seen once the dust has settled and the team are ensconced on St Kitts in the Caribbean, is that out of it all the right things may have happened, at least so far as the Test team are concerned. It is, with a nice sense of timing, precisely six months until the first day of the Ashes series and, no matter how people view the forthcoming six Tests against West Indies, this will be the focus. And from the hiatus, far from having their chances diminished against a vulnerable Australian team, England's prospects have been enhanced.
Kevin Pietersen is not so brash as he looks. He comes over as upfront and in-your-face precisely because he is, underneath, insecure, writes Scyld Berry in the Telegraph.
Pietersen grew up with one younger and two older brothers in Natal. The two older ones are burly individuals or 'big units' too. A telling story about his childhood is that when his parents closed their eyes to say grace at meal times, the older brothers would try to nick the sausages – or whatever – from Kevin's plate. Hence the insecurity, and the pugnacity when he does stand up for himself.
Whatever the official line, it is now clear that the atmosphere in the England dressing room had become toxic. It had gone beyond conflicting personalities. They occur in every dressing room, in every walk of life, but distrust and favouritism were beginning to flourish, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.
At the risk of contradicting my suggestion in yesterday's Times that Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, should have ordered Pietersen and Peter Moores to sort out their relationship, there was no point in continuing a partnership of incompatibles, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times.
Pietersen's intention was to undertake a silent revolution against Moores and he might just have pulled it off. But the rift became public on New Year's Eve, two days after the omission of Michael Vaughan from the squad to tour the West Indies. From that point on, Pietersen's chances of one of the most egotistical campaigns ever attempted by an England cricket captain were slim, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
Pietersen said that it was the media speculation surrounding his public row with Moores that forced him to resign, but the realisation that he did not have the full support of the dressing room must have had a huge influence on his decision, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.
The non-selection of Michael Vaughan to tour the West Indies was the final straw but the rift [between Pietersen and Moores] had developed long before that, writes Paul Newman in the Daily Mail.
There is an innocence about Pietersen, something he shares with another great batsman and disaster-prone England cricketer, Geoff Boycott. They share a strange bewilderment that other people fail to see the world in the same terms, as a Boycott-centric, or a KP-centric, place, writes Simon Barnes in the Times.
One admires the ECB's thoughtfulness in giving those Aussies a morale boosting chuckle within days of them losing a home series, to Mr Pietersen's native South Africa, for the first time since 1703, writes Mathew Norman in the Independent.
There is a thin line in team sport between bringing that edge, that something extra, and upsetting colleagues. Pietersen has an unhappy knack of crossing it. This time, it seems he overestimated the strength of feeling in the ranks against Peter Moores, writes Richard Hobson in the Times.
A supremely talented batsman, part of his allure to spectators is his unpredictability. He loves taking risks, but while that can be both thrilling and acceptable in the context he understands, on the cricket field, it hastened his downfall when he gambled on unseating Moores, writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.
Also in the Telegraph, Steve James looks at the key players in the Pietersen-Moores row. He says Andrew Flintoff is an "overlooked figure lurking in the background of this matter. It is no secret that he and Pietersen are not exactly bosom-buddies."
For most of yesterday there was only one certainty. It was that Pietersen would not be captain when England set off for the West Indies in two weeks' time and then resume the ancient battle with Australia in Cardiff in July. Behind this reality was a conclusion that could not be avoided. It was that whatever the detail, whether he jumped or was pushed, Pietersen had not only reduced himself to a parody of what an international captain should be, writes James Lawton in the Independent.
Kevin Pietersen is a contradiction. A flamboyant batsman with a pop star for a wife and Hollywood actors among his friends, Pietersen was a celebrity cricket captain in the mould of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Wally Hammond. Yet few tales of bad behaviour have emerged about Pietersen, not even unsubstantiated rumour, writes Patrick Kidd in the Times.
Also read Andrew Miller's comment that Pietersen and England need each other on cricinfo.com.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo