Prior to this #Ashes tour, there was a school of thought that Kevin Pietersen had grown up. His run of poor form, a self-confessed lack of confidence, a settled family life, all suggested that here was a man who had changed.
And then, this happens.
How could he possibly have been so stupid? It’s not the speeding I’m worrying about here, it’s the the crime against fashion. Did he really think that the jeans/flip-flop combination was a good move?
You know the Ashes must be coming close when articles about cricket start appearing in unusual parts of the newspapers. Standing out over the weekend was a half-decent interview with Stuart Broad in the Times magazine (although I wasn’t too sure about the sub-title – ‘the finest, most destructive English player of his generation’).
However, the piece was sullied by an italicized closing to which readers of sporting interviews are becoming more and more accustomed – Stuart Broad wears underpants by Primark, the official sponsors of England cricket underwear. Those weren’t the exact words, but you get my drift.
Even worse, a mention of his sponsors is crowbarred INTO the article –
in five short years…cricket has changed: more professional, more money, more sponsors (indeed, this interview is part of Broad’s contract with…)
Shameless.
And it’s not only the Times. The excellent new Wisden Cricketer has a big interview with Kevin Pietersen. While the main text is fine, the photos grate – the only way for KP to get more visibility for his sponsors would have been if he had painted three stripes on his forehead.
I know from my time at the Guardian that sports editors grapple with this dilemma. Do they give in, or do they hold out? Most give in. How much longer before the interview is conducted by the sponsor, and the journalist does nothing at all?
NACB is sponsored by Bubbles of Honor Oak Park, suppliers of alcohol and bread when Sainsburys is closed.
Everyone seems to agree that England need an in-form Kevin Pietersen if they are to hold on to the Ashes this winter. In fact, it’s been said so many times, it’s getting boring. But is it actually true?
Since March 2009, when KP scored his last Test hundred, England haven’t lost a Test series, and have lost just three of nineteen matches. Pietersen missed three matches through injury in the 2009 Ashes, and averages a less-than-great 35 from the others.
During this time, England have played a number of teams significantly stronger than the current Aussies, including the 2009 Aussies and South Africa in South Africa. The absence of KP has allowed the likes of Eion Morgan and Jonathan Trott to break through and hit match-winning hundreds.
So perhaps England’s best chance of success in Australia is not to pick KP first, and then fit ten players in around him. Instead, they would surely do well to pick the best eleven players - it’s revolutionary I know, but it might just work.
By constantly repeating the mantra that KP will come good, as if there must be trouble if he doesn’t, the England management are showing a weakness rather than a strength. And they will need all the strength they can muster if they are to beat their oldest foe once again.
Oval, Day 1. Surrey 324/6 v Glamorgan
Kevin Pietersen had to wait until almost 3 o’clock yesterday for some action on his first–class debut for Surrey, his first County Championship match since May 2008. As he walked back to the pavilion three minutes later, zero to his name, he was probably wishing the rain had continued to fall.
It wasn’t only the weather that delayed Pietersen’s entrance. Young South African opener Jason Roy demonstrated his potential with a series of crunching drives. It was only over-confidence that got the better of him, as he jumped out of the crease and was bowled by Dean Cosker for 69.
KP never looks comfortable before getting off the mark. His first ball was pushed nervously into the gully. He missed his second and was given out LBW. The bowler was Cosker – a slow left-armer strikes again.
Surrey were in danger of imploding at 136/4, but Rory Hamilton-Brown steadied the innings (if steady can ever be applied to the batting of the Surrey skipper). After a few balls to get his eye in, the ball began to disappear to all parts of the ground.
Hamilton-Brown’s method is simple, and a marked contrast to that of Pietersen – foot to the pitch of the ball, and then smack the thing as hard and as far as possible. Just before tea he began to open up with a six over midwicket off the persevering James Harris, and three more sixes came soon after the break.
He had reached 96 off 84 balls when he went for his seventh six, missed and was stumped off Cosker. Schofield and Batty played out the last few overs of the day with few alarms, and it seems that bowlers will need some help from the batsman to take wickets on this pitch.
Spectators came to see the batting of KP, but left remembering the big hitting of H-B. It was a good swap. Chris Adams has talked a lot recently about using KP’s knowledge and experience in the dressing room, but perhaps it is Pietersen who could learn something from his young captain.
I was interested to read today that former Surrey captain Mark Butcher believes KP’s stay at the Oval will be brief.
Butch told TalkSport: ‘It's just a loan. Surrey are essentially doing the ECB a favour in taking him, so where that leaves KP when he is looking for a county next year I don't know.’
KP seems to think that any county would be crazy not to want him. His original statement on leaving Hampshire (‘geographically it just doesn't work...I live in Chelsea’) seemed to presume that the two London-based teams would fight over his signature.
But why should they? Surrey’s apparent refusal to commit long-term to KP makes sense. If KP is playing well, he won’t be playing for them, he’ll be playing for England. If he’s playing badly, why should they drop someone else to make room for an out-of-form player with no real interest in the club?
Surrey are pretty poor at the moment, but even they aren’t so desperate that they are prepared to be used as some kind of KP form-finding testing ground. Surely Surrey need players who are prepared to work for the team, not just themselves.
There is a pattern here. KP’s time in South Africa ended in tears (his view of Graeme Smith - ‘an absolute muppet’), his time at Nottinghamshire ended in tears (Jason Gallian throwing his equipment off the balcony), and now it’s ended in tears at Hampshire too.
Why should we believe that things would end any differently at Surrey or Middlesex?
So despite Michael Lumb breaking his foot in the Championship game against Somerset earlier in the week, Hampshire still don’t want to give Kevin Pietersen a run-out on Twenty20 finals day tomorrow.
It makes you wonder how bad it would have to get for Hampshire before they turn to the man formerly known as England’s Best Batsman. How many players would have to be out injured before KP was asked if he fancied a game?
And maybe KP didn’t want to play anyway. Having already said that he was on his way out of the club (despite being under contract), it would certainly have been pretty awkward in the changing room. He would have had to learn a few names for a start.
It seems now that there is no going back – the relationship has broken down like an unreliable boiler on a cold winter’s night. I’m with Hampshire - for tomorrow only, they are my team.
Perhaps you, like me, thought that Kevin Pietersen was a new man. More mature, happily married, with a baby on the way. He was almost becoming likeable.
Well, we were wrong - and this photo in today’s Independent proves it.
I think it’s just about the most nauseating thing I’ve ever seen.
Read the full interview here
