“Andy Flower. Contagiously sour. Infectiously dour. He could walk into a room and suck all the joy out of it in five seconds. Just a mood hoover. That’s how I came to think of him: a Mood Hoover”

😯 😆

Some Guardian linkage on his book here

The problem KP has is that every single person who has managed him in cricket has found him a pain the a##e. Now if it was one or 2 coaches/captains we may say it was a personality clash, but it’s not, it’s everyone. Which, to my eyes at least, makes him look like an idiot with no people skills.

The sooner KP fades into insignificance the better, he is the biggest knob in cricket since Shane Warne…

My summary of the book without reading it or giving him the oxygen of publicity is that it was someone else’s fault.

He’s just trolling isn’t he?

I’m still looking forward to reading it. Even if it is a work of fiction!

2, 3, 4 sides to every story often even more, egos go clang.

KP should have dealt firmly with right from the start, ie dropped when he misbehaved. he grew to think (understand) he was bigger than the team and certainly the management. It tells me a lot about him that he expected to play for England when he had no country contract and was just playing IPL

As @aracer says he’s got a book to sell so he’s trolling

The man is an anus.

I still love him for 2005

I can see why Prior gets some stick, how he got his place back at the start of the summer when injured and having done nothing on the field of play was bemusing. While Carberry has been given no re-entry.
KP his own enemy, but he did score a lot of centuries in a manner that only Sir Viv could match. Bound to be some downside to that level of genius, and not helped by the IPL era we have entered.

chambord – Member

I still love him for 2005

i think this it what makes it so sad. 5th day final test at The Oval was one of the most enjoyable days of my life (so far) But now I just look at him as a **** instead of a hero.

5th day final test at Lords was one of the most enjoyable days of my life (so far)

Enjoyable?!? I bit my nails so far down they’ve only just made it back past the fingertips.

And it was the Oval.

Always intrigued by KP. A colleague’s partner worked behind the scenes at ECB and said KP was a lovely guy, and she didn’t tolerate fools. But all those teams, players and coaches can’t all have got him wrong.

whoops yes The Oval, edited now. My friend was bricking it but I was feeling quite boozy by about 12pm so fairly confident

The only thing i could do to keep my mind occupied was to create a tracking spreadsheet, that took current run rate and then extrapolated that against # of overs remaining in the day, to work out not only how big England’s led was getting but also how each over down was an over the Aussies wouldn’t get to chase the runs down again.

Listening on the radio was a nightmare. Countless times it would be ‘Pietersen goes for the hook……. it’s a top edge and high in the air……… and over fine leg for 6!!!’ – with me hanging on tenterhooks unable to see anything and waiting for the next words to come out of Aggers!

Great times.

Back to the point. He is / was an amazing talent. And not for nothing did the Aussies christen him Figjam, he had the ability to wind his own teammates and the oppo up at the same time. That combined for sure made him prime box office. I’m interested because I’m pretty sure that while a lot of the conflict will have been of his own making, I’m also pretty sure there are a few other unsavoury types in the dressing room – for example, I’ve heard more than a few times that Trott’s issues weren’t entirely caused by factors outside of the England circle.

Be interesting when they’re all long retired and out of contract to see who the ‘others’ are that have supposedly begged him to lift the lid on the culture of the England team.

I liked KP as a player but he must have some ego on him

IMHO the team will be run like a public school boy clique and he probably refused to play along and join in.

He does seem to fall out with everyone though.

Some of the quotes coming out are making me giggle:

About not passing sensitive information about Andrew Strauss onto the saffers

“There were retired second-string club cricketers in Bradford who would have known how to get Andrew Strauss out. Bowl around the wicket.”

Loving the idea of Matt Prior calling himself ‘The Big Cheese’. And having to look on Google to find Paul Downton’s unimpressive batting stats.

If even a third of what he says is true, it doesn’t cast many people in the England setup in a very good light, however much of a prat he is as well.

KP in his prime batting was great. However as a player he feel out with every single coach he ever played with, including all the junior coach in SA. At some point you have to ask if they were all wrong and in fact KP was right. That is not to say that everybody else is wonderful, but unless you in the changing room and played in those matches you will never know.

Top level sport is full of strong personalities – they would never have got there otherwise. There will always be clashes and cliques. It is part of the fun as a spectator to try to work out what it is all about!!

Pietersen is a classic example of someone who combined natural talent with a force of will and ended up becoming unmanageable. One of my old playing buddies played state cricket in South Africa. When he played against Pietersen he was a nineteen year old who bowled filthy offspin and batted at nine. By a lot of self-belief he dragged himself into being one of the most naturally gifted batsman to play for England. So far so good.

Unfortunately this strutting, swaggering self-belief also has a tendency to rub others up the wrong way, and blinding him to when he is, in fact, being a prat. He has fallen out with virtually everyone he has played with. That is more than mere coincidence. His attitude in Australia last winter stank. Plain and simple. Put aside the off-field crap, he batted like a pillock in that series, except when he did a hammed-up stolid knock in one game. He tried to smash their crap off spinner over the longest boundary at Perth. Into the Freemantle doctor. Caught long on. Siddle set a frankly obvious field and his hubris wouldn’t allow him not to clip one off his legs straight to the fielder.

The texting incident in 2012 was unacceptable. Seriously? Texting your mates in the oppo about what a ‘doerce’ your own captain is, then thinking you have been hard done by when the team etc take offence.

At the last count it was two coaches and a captain he managed to play a big part in ousting. That is not something that a decent team player would ever have on their record.

It is true that there are some horrendous egos in the England set-up from the last few years. I played with and against Swann in my teens and he is basically a mouthy bugger who thinks he is the best/funniest at eveyrything. Broad is a petulant, arrogant poser. Anderson is basically a nasty piece of work who scowls, swears and intimidates newcomers who dare to misfield off his bowling. But here’s the thing. They manage to rub along. They manage not to fall out with the coach so badly that they get sacked.

The fact that it is Pietersen alone who is outside the tent pissing in just shows what an incredible asshole he really is.

I won’t be buying his ‘book’ as I don’t want to put any more money in the pocket of an utter nob.

Bravo dannyh, that is spot on.

Flash’s finest work ?

It is true that there are some horrendous egos in the England set-up from the last few years. I played with and against Swann in my teens and he is basically a mouthy bugger who thinks he is the best/funniest at eveyrything. Broad is a petulant, arrogant poser. Anderson is basically a nasty piece of work who scowls, swears and intimidates newcomers who dare to misfield off his bowling. But here’s the thing. They manage to rub along. They manage not to fall out with the coach so badly that they get sacked.

You don’t get to be the best team in the world for a decent period of time, by being a load of nice guys! I think I’d be upset if they weren’t all arrogant, full of themselves, and unforgiving of other’s mistakes.

BUT… As you say, they all tow the line just enough that they stay on the right side of the coaches and captains. And for that reason, KP is a complete and utter bellend of the highest proportions! Cricket is a team sport, and no individual ego is more important than the wellbeing of the whole team. Kick up enough fuss and piss enough people off, and sorry, you’re gone… Such a shame he couldn’t have just reeled it in a little bit (not too much, we wouldn’t have wanted him to be boring now eh!) as he could have gone on to be potentially Englands highest scoring and most interesting test player ever (seeing as Cook seems hell bent on no longer trying to pursue the records everybody had said he’d already have smashed by now!), but his ego was just too big…

Why is anyone surprised by any of this? We know what KP is like and the others’ behaviour has been there for all but the blind to see.

Who’s surprised?

I think we should deport him and his ‘book’ back to SA!

@dannyh nails it.

In other news and not to be outdone Keene is promoting his latest book.

For a game that bores the pants off much of the general public, it NEEDS people like KP. Look at county games, you could make entry free and games would still be half empty.

The England team is / has been full of knobs, some that entertain(ed) and some that still play.

KP is known for the help and time that he freely gave to youth team / younger players and actually scoring runs at more than two an hour. Root is known for being a punch bag, Jimmy is known for Tourette’s and I think Broad is injured…

t is true that there are some horrendous egos in the England set-up from the last few years. I played with and against Swann in my teens and he is basically a mouthy bugger who thinks he is the best/funniest at eveyrything. Broad is a petulant, arrogant poser. Anderson is basically a nasty piece of work who scowls, swears and intimidates newcomers who dare to misfield off his bowling. But here’s the thing. They manage to rub along. They manage not to fall out with the coach so badly that they get sacked.

The fact that it is Pietersen alone who is outside the tent pissing in just shows what an incredible asshole he really is.

It’s interesting that what you say pretty much coincides with what Pieterson says about their behaviour in the dressing room. Although KP’s behaviour was undoubtedly equally challenging, I can see how a situation develops where the bowlers and Prior form a little dominant club and Pieterson finds himself on the margins, which for any big-ego player, is going to fuel problems.

Perhaps the solution they found to help them ‘rub along’ was to piss all over him and the other players, like Trott? Who knows?

All I think we can conclude from KP’s comments and those of other influential figures was that there was a pretty toxic atmosphere inside the dressing room, and that management were unable to deal with it, or prepared to tolerate it.

The ‘KP Genius’ fake tweet thing, which it seems increasingly likely was driven by some of his playing colleagues, is one of the most pathetic things I have heard.

Of course Pieterson is an arse – an awful lot of top-notch sports people are. Part of the job of management is to find ways to keep all of them inside the tent and performing, particularly match-winners like him.

Bet the Aussies are laughing their nuts off. 🙂

KP on 5 Live right now

Part of being a successful team is being able to rub along with each other. You don’t have to actually like your teammates to be able to respect and value them for what they add to the team – memorably, Warne and Gilchrist didn’t get on but their partnership was pivotal in Australia’s dominance. That goes both ways, no doubting Pietersen is/was a difficult one to rub along with but I’m intrigued whether it was a case of being given enough latitude and then he still screwed it up, or whether too many egos clashed and he was ‘ganged up on’ by the names that seem to frequently surface in these discussions.

For now of course it’ll be word against word, and there’s no doubt, KP does have form for being very MEMEMEME!!, so will read what he writes with a pinch of salt. But hence what i said yesterday, when this crop of players (English and Oppo) are done and dusted, and the fuller picture emerges, I doubt it will be even close to being one way traffic.

And of course the Oppo will have done all they can to open cracks along the way; anything to avoid playing against one of the most destructive batsmen of the generation.

Just seen – Michael Vaughan and Chris Tremlett have both backed KP’s side of the story re the bowler’s clique / bullying culture.

Theres an irony that the bowlers clique is the inverse of the players vs gentleman (who tended to be batsmen) problems that cricket laboured with for so long.

Anyway, his gripes seem to read like the lament of the last man left from the 2005 ashes era ‘That gang were the best, now they’ve all gone, no-one likes me anymore, and we are playing rubbish, whats the point…’

finally it seems somewhere in all this Ian Bell just bumps along in the background 😆

Just seen – Michael Vaughan and Chris Tremlett have both backed KP’s side of the story re the bowler’s clique / bullying culture.

Hmmmmmm. I assume Vaughan is talking about after he retired (using his contacts in the dressing room) as if it had happened whilst he was playing, he should have sorted it. As captain.

Tremlett seems alright – a bit of a “pull up the ladder” type, but in a sensitive rather than selfish way. He has little to lose now as his bowling last winter was medium-paced shit. Maybe he is also mixing up his personal poor performances and feeling bad about them with an all-enveloping toxic atmosphere. I would suspect there is an element of truth in what Tremlett is saying. He would, after all, be a focus of any bullying as he is hopeless in the field and bowled dross. The less sympathetic members of the team (who are plenty) will have probably not been shy.

You have a collection of individuals here who are getting absolutely tonked in Australia. The core of the team is made up of more than a few nasty characters. It is not hard to see how the atmosphere degenerated. Particularly as they swaggered into the country only a few months after beating the Aussies reasonably comfortably. The loss of face will have led the childish members of the team to turn inwards in their desire to blame someone. But KP still stands apart, and this is the thing you really can’t get away from.

Just for the record, even when England were the number 1 team in the world there were problems with Pietersen, so this is not solely to do with last winter’s implosion. It is the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it is basically Pietersen’s self-obsession and huge ego that have been the problem throughout his whole career.

it is basically Pietersen’s self-obsession and huge ego, coupled to the inability of successive England management teams to deal with it, that have been the problem throughout his whole career.

Is Pietersen’s ego any bigger / worse than Warne’s? If their births had been reversed, would England have managed Warne, or conversely if Pietersen was Australian would they have handled him better?

At the last count it was two coaches and a captain he managed to play a big part in ousting.

2 captains if he counts himself. But he was/is an amazing talent and I’d still pay good money to watch him bat.

I do wonder if part of the struggle is his background. Lets face it the texting scandle was a disgrace from which he should have been binned anyway. I think this book is actually doing him more harm than good, as people who defended him before, seem to be hardening their stance to him.

Does he like anyone he worked with?

I still say deport him…..the fact he’s a Mate of Piers Morgan seals his fate!

KP (Kevin Pietersen) stated that AC (captain Alastair Cook) was weak, tactically inept and that his latest effort to galvanise the team was “pathetic”.

In Adelaide for the Second Test, AF (coach Andy Flower) told players not to stay out late, which KP disobeyed by taking out two young players drinking with him until late (an incident which was front page news in the Adelaide press the following day).

Prior to the Perth Test, an England team physiotherapist approached AF (Andy Flower) to inform AF that KP had told him that KP was looking to do anything to go home after the Perth Test if England lost the match to go 3?0 down. KP allegedly told the physio that if England lost the match, his knee was “going to be really playing up”

After playing a terrible shot to get out in one of his innings in the Fourth Test, KP returned to the England dressing room and in front the younger England players, shouted “you lot are useless”.

nice 🙄

Must be a big relief in the England squad not to have him around.
Seems KP is up against Roy Keane as to who can create enough controversy for their new books.