Pietersen and Moores need to eat humble pie
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
AFP
A bit of humble pie for Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores is required if the ridiculous mess in the England cricket team is to be cleared up before mud sticks to everyone, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times.
Neither should lose his job, given some clear thinking and plain speaking. Neither, in fact, has much of a record: England have won seven Tests out of 22 under Moores's guidance as head coach, only one of these against a top-notch team, and that consolation victory in the last Test against South Africa in August had much to do with Pietersen's batting and captaincy.
The new captain, however, has swiftly had to learn that a flurry of one-day victories over a South Africa team content with the main prize in the bag, was delusory. The Stanford embarrassment and India's excellence in November and December put things into clearer perspective.
If Kevin Pietersen's short and controversial stint as England captain is already over, it will satisfy those who argued that Andrew Strauss was a more sensible choice to replace Michael Vaughan last August, writes Huw Turberville in the Telegraph.
Kevin Pietersen has divided opinions ever since he arrived in England as former team-mates can testify. Stephen Brenkley explores a chequered record in the Independent.
It was like that in Nottinghamshire six years ago and what happened there bears similarity to what is happening now. Pietersen had been taken to the county by Clive Rice, a South African whom he presumably respected and admired. When Rice left the county, however, things started to go wrong. He did not like the new regime and he fell out terminally with Jason Gallian, the county's captain. Gallian, the most un-Australian of Australians, is sedulous in reflecting on his relationship with Pietersen and is clearly not proud of his own part in it, which culminated in Gallian hurling some of Pietersen's kit over the dressing-room balcony at Trent Bridge.
If and when Kevin Pietersen succeeds in driving Peter Moores from office, he may find that the relief of ousting a man he did not rate is replaced by a more profound problem: how to unite a dressing room containing characters who do not necessarily regard their leader as the chosen one, writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo