LOL. What KP tweeted was not horrendous or anything, but it's just a trickling of exactly what turned England fans - and his own fans, like myself - against him in the wake of his dropping last time. He quickly erodes sympathy.
It's all well and good saying 'well it's done he'll never play for England again' but things can turn around in a hurry. A summer crisis and KP continuing to score runs, who's to say Strauss might not have done a u-turn? Sure, it's unlikely, but why shut the door they've left ajar for you? Be the bigger man.
Instead, he slowly reminds everyone why Strauss and co don't trust him. He's an idiot.
Yeah, pretty much my thinking. I always supported the ECB's decision to axe him; it was their prerogative to do so, and since they seemingly (for reasons unbeknownst to the rest of us) prudentially decided that this was genuinely the best course of action, then I was happy to defer to their judgment. Good player or no, if he really was a damaging presence on the team and dressing room then I think that's a valid enough justification for kicking him out.
What has followed, however, has been a total fiasco. It is hard to remember anything from a sporting context in which an exercise in PR has been handled so appallingly badly (though the Liverpool FC "We support Suarez" shirts are probably not far off). For comments to have been made which strongly implied that if he scored enough runs he'd have a change to get back in the fold, only for these to later be retracted in the manner in which they were is just dire. It's an absolutely ****ty way to treat anyone, whether you like them or not. One suspects the ECB felt that Pietersen would not call their bluff, and made their original comments as a totally hollow gesture, designed only to save face and make them appear like the "good guys", and then totally **** themselves when he went back to the County Championship and caned it. It's just rubbish. The great joke of course, is that KP was axed on the basis of "team spirit and atmosphere", or whatever. I can't imagine that the shenanigans that have occurred since have done a great deal in the name of team spirit and atmosphere - i.e. what will the existing squad be thinking about the ECB? "Oh ****, I'm under the management of one of the most incompetent organisations in world sport, dire" I imagine.
But yeah, anyway, crap handling or no (and this clearly is a case of crap handling), KP is just so conceited, annoying and dense. It's just impossible to feel too much sympathy for him when he is just such a massive tool.
