Pietersen's role in Strauss' retirement overestimated

Kevin Pietersen may not be worth the weight that popular opinion suggests, writes Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail. He concludes that England would have lost the Lord's Test inspite of his presence, and that he had little to do with Strauss' decision to retire.

Conspiracists love the idea that Pietersen helped bring down Strauss, but conspiracists tend to ignore the evidence. Strauss had played 100 Tests, 50 of them as captain. He was no longer scoring any meaningful runs. England had lost six Tests out of 11 since ascending to No 1. He's 35.

Next up was a trip to India, where things were not going to get any easier. If Pietersen featured at all in his list of reasons for retiring, it would have been somewhere near the bottom.