Pietersen outmanoeuvred by English behaviour
Kevin Pietersen might have gone about his business with Peter Moores the wrong way, but over at The Wisden Cricketer , Lawrence Booth argues that it was his misunderstanding of the peculiar behaviour of the English:
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
Kevin Pietersen might have gone about his business with Peter Moores the wrong way, but over at The Wisden Cricketer, Lawrence Booth argues that it was his misunderstanding of the peculiar behaviour of the English:
In the eyes of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Pietersen committed a couple of tangible crimes: he did not have the full support of the dressing-room (the attempts by certain players in recent days to claim otherwise have exposed another of Fox’s defining English characteristics – hypocrisy); and he was seen to make excessive demands regarding the identity of the coach (according to Dennis Amiss, the vice-chairman of the ECB, this made his position untenable, but for some reason only once it became public: Fox points out that the English like to avoid embarrassment at all costs).
But there was another, tacit crime: Pietersen did not understand the Hidden Rules of English Behaviour – the sub-title of Fox’s work. He was not, in short, English. When people point out that Pietersen’s appointment in August was an accident waiting to happen, they may have been right – but almost certainly for the wrong reasons. After all, other captains have presided over divided dressing rooms: big egos are a fact of life in international sport. No, Pietersen’s unspoken crime was the un-English one of throwing his weight around without due deference to qualities to such as self-deprecation, humour and not taking the whole thing so damn seriously. His directness proved unsettling.
Will Luke is assistant editor of ESPNcricinfo