Andy Flower: “Contagiously sour, infectiously dour”; “Mood Hoover”. Matt Prior: “The Big Cheese.” James Anderson: “A Bully.” Alastair Cook: “A Company Man.” Stuart Broad: “Not the sharpest tool in the box.” To those in katzenjammers, these are some of the comments that Kevin Pietersen made in his autobiography released about six months ago.
If one were to believe all the codswallop he wrote, one would consider Kevin Pietersen a saint. That, however, isn’t the case, as the more erudite people will tell. With the release of that controversial book, there was no right for any KP fan to be in a sanguine mood, while the ones against him were moshing to the tunes of Meghan Trainor, and rightly so as the South African had seemingly ended all chances of returning to play for England thanks to his impudent acts towards his team-mates and the ECB.
Six months later came Colin Graves—the future ECB chairman. He ensured himself a blockbuster entry by announcing the possibility of England bringing back Kevin Pietersen, just to plunge English cricket into an even bigger mess. The funniest part? Paul Downton’s authority being undermined in public by Graves, as the former was left speechless.
English Cricket has never been in such a stupefying state of affairs. We have a struggling England team that bowed down to Bangladesh, we have Graves making Paul Downton, the Managing Director of The ECB, feel as if he is but a mere figure, and the scuzziest part being Kevin Pietersen calling the future ECB chairman about a potential return with people even backing him to do so, and among those are the very people who think Pietersen could have won England the World Cup—which has to be the joke of the decade.
No doubt, Kevin Pietersen was as good a player as the sport has seen in the years gone by. He was breathtaking once he got going: Australia’s finest tormentor after Andrew Flintoff and Ian Botham and a man of incommensurable self-confidence and belief. Concisely, the former England number four was quite special. But once the smidgens of his dark side started to make their presence felt, he was no longer the Kevin Pietersen who murdered the Indian spinners on a rank-turner at Mumbai, he was no longer the very Kevin who snaffled the breath out of everyone with his willow at The Oval in 2005.
To think Kevin Pietersen will be the solution to England’s woes is certainly optimistic and not realistic. Yes, he may be a short-term solution; yes he may win you matches in the upcoming year or so, but what after that? The former England batsman being 34, his retirement by 2018 is an inevitability. What follows is a chaotic state of affairs ahead of the 2019 World Cup, again. For a team that is well into its new era, a team that is moving forward on a precariously poised rope held by the young talent, it won’t be clever by any means to have someone who has already peaked, and no longer the prodigious batsman he once was. England need players who come with the intent to change the future, not to rectify what has been done in the past.
To recall a man, who, by his flippancy, and dissonance, hurt the integrity in public of those involved in every bit of England’s golden era, is nothing short of madness. It is the kind of madness that has a meaning as ignorance for those who have worked their hearts out to make a case for their England spot. What message does that send to the likes of James Vince, or Jason Roy, or Sam Billings—the young cricketers who have spent hours in the nets for that England shirt? If there is a way forward for English cricket, it is with these young cricketers, the ones that promise you to win a World Cup, not the ones who want to have the old issues sorted. If KP comes in, what happens is a young talent being denied of a deserved spot, and then, a slump in his form, case closed—a promising talent is ruined.
Colin Graves is a fantastic individual, a man of stupendous intellect, a man who is courageous and gritty. The former Yorkshire chairman surely promises to revive English Cricket and restore its domination—something that makes me feel optimistic. However, opening up the doors of return for Kevin Pietersen at a time as this could surely prove to b a case of the ECB shooting itself in the foot. The sooner Graves realises it, the better it would be to avoid an unintentional suicide.
