It's Tough Being Me - The Kevin Pietersen Story

[Uppercut]

However, to do that is to assess the matter on paper, and cricket is obviously not played on paper. For mine, it's possibly to argue that the balance of side depends on his absence. How a team performs is to some extent at least dependent on how all the constituent parts (i.e. the players) link up with each other and interact. It is a team game. As Jono said earlier on in the thread, it isn't KP vs South Africa. If all the players in the team are diametrically opposed to each other and pulling in opposite directions what hope is there of it performing to the best of its ability? Including a player who's basically alienated himself from the rest of the squad, routinely behaved poorly and relentlessly pursued his own agenda at the expense of everyone else doesn't sound like a formula for finding the optimal balance of a side to me.

I don't think cricket's enough of a team game that you could conceivably replace Kevin Pietersen with Jonny Bairstow and improve the side. He's not unprofessional in-game is the thing. If he was acting a dick on the field of play it would be different.

 

[grecian]

Yeah surely if some of the players felt KP was extremely hard done by they would, at the very least, leak something.

Oh, don't you get it, the conspiricists are out in force, the evil ECB are keeping them all under wraps, as they're frightened of the bechinned evil one, and the clique. Tin-hattery has been everywhere, well known Swann was at the grassy knowl, before faking the moon landings, falsifying the holocaust claims, whilst conspiring with the CIA to kill Diana and bring down the twin towers. Oh and he made Shergar into burgers too.

 

[sledger]

I don't think cricket's enough of a team game that you could conceivably replace Kevin Pietersen with Jonny Bairstow and improve the side. He's not unprofessional in-game is the thing. If he was acting a dick on the field of play it would be different.

I'm not trying to say it would actively improve the side, per se, but it would act as a form of damage limitation on the general atmosphere and togetherness of the side. In other words, including him would do more harm than good. Of course what I say is conjecture, we'll obviously never know how they would have fared if they had included him, but that's certainly how I see it.

 

[Jono]

I don't think cricket's enough of a team game that you could conceivably replace Kevin Pietersen with Jonny Bairstow and improve the side. He's not unprofessional in-game is the thing. If he was acting a dick on the field of play it would be different.

Nah its ****ing hard to bat with someone you do not trust.

I agree its not an "improvement", per se, but still.

Edit: Agree with Green ranger basically. Limit a toxic dressing room becoming more toxic.

 

[sledger]

Nah its ****ing hard to bat with someone you do not trust.

I agree its not an "improvement", per se, but still.

Edit: Agree with Green ranger basically. Limit a toxic dressing room becoming more toxic.

Would have been hilariously awful if he had played and got Strauss run out really badly.

Edit: and then done his usual KP trick of getting out playing a terrible shot. Would have gone down a storm in the dressing room I'm sure.

 

[uvelocity]

Yeah surely if some of the players felt KP was extremely hard done by they would, at the very least, leak something.

I'm Leaking - YouTube

 

[Jono]

I'm Leaking - YouTube

 

[Uppercut]

Nah its ****ing hard to bat with someone you do not trust.

I agree its not an "improvement", per se, but still.

Edit: Agree with Green ranger basically. Limit a toxic dressing room becoming more toxic.

But he's a perfectly good runner between the wickets and pretty professional in-game. Why wouldn't you trust him?

 

[sledger]

But he's a perfectly good runner between the wickets and pretty professional in-game. Why wouldn't you trust him?

Would you trust someone who you perceived to be primarily "looking out for number one" with anything?

Even with the best will in the world, I think most people would find it hard to do so. To suggest there's going to be no overlap between in-game and not in-game relationships is being somewhat unrealistic imo. This may affect different people differently, and some will undoubtedly be better at dealing with it than others, but I doubt you'd find anyone who it didn't affect at all.

 

[Uppercut]

Surely everyone's primarily looking out for number one?

I'd only mistrust him if I thought our interests were opposed. But KP wanting to score lots of runs and the team wanting to win are pretty compatible.

 

[sledger]

Surely everyone's primarily looking out for number one?

I'd only mistrust him if I thought our interests were opposed. But KP wanting to score lots of runs and the team wanting to win are pretty compatible.

I'm sure they are, but not everybody makes such an obvious song and dance about it and creates a big furor over getting what they want. Of course everyone wants to achieve as much as they possibly can for themselves, but to use a horrible cliche: 'there's no "I" in team'. By behaving in the way he has, it's like he's created two tiers of "being out for number one", where his is placed considerably above that of everyone else. It'd be enough to rile anyone.

Their interests may not be opposed, but any sort of strain on a relationship between different members of the side will inevitably effect performance, and crucially how they perform together, it's simply unavoidable. The John Terry/Wayne Bridge incident is a prime example of this sort of thing. Though the circumstances were obviously totally different, it illustrates perfectly how something happening off the field will severely undermine two (or more) players co-operating on the field.

 

[Jono]

Surely everyone's primarily looking out for number one?

I'd only mistrust him if I thought our interests were opposed. But KP wanting to score lots of runs and the team wanting to win are pretty compatible.

If I need him to sacrifice himself because I'm batting well and there's a run out situation, I want to know he will do it. I want to know that if I send him to third man or fine leg, he's not going to have a whinge. I want to know that if I put him on to bowl, he goes for 10 off the over, and I take him off, he's not going to be texting Steyn saying "Strauss is such a ****" and just in general making the atmosphere one where the captain is being undermined.

 

[NickDB]

Would have been hilariously awful if he had played and got Strauss run out really badly.

Edit: and then done his usual KP trick of getting out playing a terrible shot. Would have gone down a storm in the dressing room I'm sure.

That's an interesting point. Maybe KP being dropped is also good for KP, imagine that happens?

It could without any malice at all it could. If it did KPs career would be over, yes it appears to be over bar the shouting already, but there may still be the outside chance it isn't.

However if KP plays and does something like that I don't see anyway he'd staying playing for England.

 

[sledger]

BBC Sport - Kevin Pietersen's absence may help England, says Tim Bresnan

Tim dancing around the issue there, not actually saying anything about Pietersen himself at all. Probably wise and for the best, but interesting nonetheless.

 

[MW1304]

I like how the headline there tries to focus on Bres saying we could be a better team without him. Not really the underlying point of what he was trying to say there.

 

[Daemon]

If this happened 50 years ago it'd probably have been settled with a fist fight in the english dressing room

 

[sledger]

I wonder who would emerge as victorious in a fight between all of the English side tbh. None of them particularly strike me as the kind who'd be capable of knocking your block off.

 

[Expressway76]

If this happened 50 years ago it'd probably have been settled with a fist fight in the english dressing room

Marquess of Queensberry rules?

 

[Jager]

I wonder who would emerge as victorious in a fight between all of the English side tbh. None of them particularly strike me as the kind who'd be capable of knocking your block off.

I reckon Swanny would be a nutter. Maybe Prior? Got some rage in him, he does

 

[MW1304]

I wonder who would emerge as victorious in a fight between all of the English side tbh. None of them particularly strike me as the kind who'd be capable of knocking your block off.

Gotta be Bres. Guy is built like the proverbial house of bricked **** and has a bit of the Northern grumpiness about him.