Anderson on Pietersen

Here’s James Anderson, reacting to the Pietersen book on Clare Balding’s BT Sport show.

The same themes keep recurring in all these interviews: a shame, sad, overshadows.

With the greatest respect to Anderson himself, are they are all reading from an ECB script?

You can see the full interview on BT Sport 1 at 10.15pm tonight.

27 comments

  • The players are now under complete control. Not just in cricket terms but in all aspects of their lives. They can’t go against company policy or they will lose their ECB contract.

    While there has always been a deal of secrecy and company line pushed, you always felt the team was being picked on merit. I’m not sure that is the case now. The team selection seems to take in other aspects such as obedience, and also sponsor friendly characteristics.

    Look are our ODI captain. His face seems to match the corporate image.

    • Totally agree. It’s almost like he wanted to say ‘yes I’d like KP back’ but then thought better of it. As always we have to read between the lines. Had he thought ‘no KP is a disruptive nob’ then I’m sure he would’ve been a bit more forthright.

      • I think if Mr Anderson had said that KP was the most disruptive element in “all the dressing rooms Ive ever been in…” then I should expect every thinking person would shout: “Pots and black kettles!” He wants to carry on playing for England so he is hardly going to rock the boat. And of course his future, after cricket, might be damned as well if he said anything. Now that is what I call very sad.

  • It’s always been my view that when you pray to the “Money God” he will generally give you what you desire. His price for that? Your humanity and integrity!!

  • Of course they are reading from a script! The ECB won’t allow England players to go in front of the cameras at the end of a day’s play with the score on 300-3 without a script. Naturally they want to control this story as much as they are able.

    Dobell revealed on West Midlands radio yesterday that he had been speaking on the phone to an England player who is going to confirm the bullying story “quite soon”. West Midlands is Jonathan Trott country. Now, of course, if the conversation really did take place by telephone, the unnamed player could have been talking from anywhere, but perhaps George said he was speaking by phone so as not to give away his identity? Perhaps he had actually been interviewing Trott in Birmingham. Of course, even if the player is Trott in Birmingham, the conversation could have been on the phone anyway. All this is speculation, but I have felt all along that the Trott anecdotes in the book are unlikely to have appeared without JT’s blessing, and may even have been included at his insistence.

    Put it this way, if the player who is about to speak out is someone other than Trott, I will consider that a bonus, because I’m sure Trott will come forward at some stage anyway. (Dobell actually talks about “one or two players”, but only “one quite soon”).

    • Clive, in some ways I hope it’s not Trott because they will have no shame in going after him. I hope he Considers his health problems, because he will receive some of the vicious hatred aimed at anyone who does not become an ECB shrill.

      But it is going to be a player no longer in the team, and who thinks he has no chance getting back in. Speaking out is not something that advances your career in this set up.

    • If players for England can talk to the press without having to be “outed” so why can’t a player give another view without being “outed”. After all, what is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander.

    • “Dobell revealed on West Midlands radio yesterday that he had been speaking on the phone to an England player who is going to confirm the bullying story “quite soon”.

      Was the story presented as specifically having a WM connection? Was it on BBC WM?

  • Wow, I never thought Anderson would show enough intelligence to become a politician. Watch out Cameron, Millband et al.

  • Thanks to the ECB media machine, when one sees, for example, Cook, Jimmy and Broady, Bell interviewed it strikes me I have never encountered such an immature bunch of people for their age. Okay, so they play sport for a living but does that mean they should have the mental approach of a teenager?

    • Mark Taffin – it’s astonishing, isn’t it? Anderson’s married with children (I always wonder if he’d like his little girls to hear the language he uses on the field) but he seemed to be playing the part of a 17-year-old.

      • Yes, they all come across as gauche and unworldly. Now whether this is the intention of the ECB media programme… But hasn’t one of them the balls to stand up and say THIS is what I think? Maybe the excellent salaries they’re on is reward for their silence and stunted emotional development; maybe they remember those who didn’t make the gravy train, only to earn a far less remunerative living in the county championship.

  • When is the England team going to have the courage to stand up for themselves and each other.Cannot believe they are too frightened to stand up to the incompetents the useless and the vindictive who are busy destroying English cricket and fast becoming a laughing stock around the world.They let KP take the full blame for OZ knowing full well that it wasn’t him but their feared coach and his laptop.If they thought the position would then change they were seriously mistaken He is still there under another guise and nothing is really different as we can see by the way they are acting Grow up , find some courage so we, England supporters can be proud of you again..

    • Amen to that Julie. If they did have that sort of courage then the ECB and the rest would be sent packing. However, they are more or less being “blackmailed?” “Do as you are told or lose your place?” Like I said sitting on the fence can be mighty uncomfortable. Maybe okay now, when you are still playing cricket at the highest level. Question is: how do you live with yourself when you remain dishonest? They are all so exposed and all so public. Nevertheless you have to know if you can carry on playing for your country without the integrity to be honest. What about when you are alone at night how will you feel about your lack of integrity? I have much sympathy for them all. I couldn’t do that and it cost me some promotional biggies and loss of the financial rewards that would have come with it. However I can live with myself. The people who perpetrated the bullying just “excuse” themselves from their awful treatment of others with: We know what we are doing…blah, blah, blah! Thankfully they were found out and got were gone when new management swept clean. That is what needs to be done with the present ECB incumbents!

      • It would appear the team do not even trust each other.If they did or if they had a real leader they could all stand together and the ECB would have to change their ways I too have sympathy for them but mostly for the guilt they must have to live with not only for KP but the other players the ECB have just dumped. They must stand together but any leader material has been removed by Andy Flower.It is so sad .

  • Did you expect Jimmy to agree with KP, given that basically KP has accused him of being one of the main protagonists of the bullying.

    But apparently, we’ve all been nobbled by the ECB if we don’t agree with everything that KP says.

  • I think a bit of perspective might be needed on this thread – some of the comments are getting pretty childish and losing touch with the real world. If bashing people just becomes a default setting it takes on a fairly ugly tone.

    For Anderson it must be like his family having a bloodletting. He’s spent three hundred days a year with some of these people for most of the last decade and, as he said, experienced a lot of success and good times. I can well imagine this is genuinely distressing for him, quite possibly very confusing too. Seeing people he’s close to fighting in this way it would be very difficult to take sides, regardless of where his sympathies lie. And, even if it’s utterly justified, seeing those years of success tarnished must feel a little like grief. That’s how I feel and I was only a fan.

    He’s in an unenviable position: much as with a serious fight within a family, by trying to stay neutral and reasonable, both intractable sides take your reasonableness as siding with the opposition.

    And it’s quite possible, of course, for two people to have the same experience and have completely different memories of it. Think of school. One boy will remember it as genuinely the happiest time of his life, he will mourn its loss. Another boy will find it so hideous, such a living hell, that he kills himself to escape. They both sat in the same classes, slept in the same dorm, played the same sports. They are both telling the truth whilst recalling completely different memories of the same experiences.

    • That’s very fair and empathetic, but this is hardly a new situation, is it? It’s not like a huge drama had suddenly erupted in the ‘family’ that might have left Anderson shocked and upset. The outside world saw that things were going hideously wrong in cricket terms almost a year ago, and even if you don’t believe anything Pietersen says, there has been an evident pattern of unpleasant behaviour on the pitch for longer than that. Dhoni stuck his neck out a long way to make a statement that Anderson’s treatment of other players wasn’t acceptable. So none of this is news to Jimmy, he’s been living it all for a long time and must know what he thinks about it..

      We always hear about Anderson that ‘he wouldn’t say boo to a goose away from the game’ as if that makes it OK that he behaves like a thug when he’s bowling. I’m afraid he’s found out that if he comes across as a gauche, shy, immature person in interviews, people will make excuses for other things he does.

      Pietersen’s actually quite kind to him in the book and suggests that he just went along with what others were doing. I think that regardless of any of the Pietersen saga, he needs to take a good look at himself.

      • Well, this is rather what I’m talking about. The video itself is innocuous, but you’re using it as an excuse for a rant about Anderson.

        “but this is hardly a new situation, is it? It’s not like a huge drama had suddenly erupted in the ‘family’ that might have left Anderson shocked and upset.”

        The book is new, and the contents and/or tone seem to have genuinely taken a lot of the players by surprise. I don’t see why you find it so unreasonable that Anderson may actually be somewhat shocked and saddened? It’s a fairly vitriolic account of the most successful period of Anderson’s life. Anderson, Swann, and the rest didn’t seem to have a clue why he was sacked at the time and, given the ECB’s attitude since, I don’t see why they should have a much better idea now.

        I don’t see the need to see Machiavellian plots in every single thing. I just see a man in a difficult situation who doesn’t really know the answers and doesn’t know what to say. The knee-jerk abuse doesn’t do anyone any favours.

  • Jimmy still rates KP doesn’t he? He still thinks a great deal of him? I can hear that in the way he just won’t be drawn on slagging him off. Quite an eye opener really. Good on Jimmy for not being one of those who chose an easy route to slag off KP. I can understand completely though why he is not saying anything. He wants to play for England. Not that I would ever have been even a speck in the eye of batting for England. However I do have the t-shirt of being one of those who stood up to bullies on behalf of others. I did “out” the appalling management who allowed a bullying culture to not only exist but to expand its boundaries. Not a comfortable place I can tell yer. However sitting on the fence is even more uncomfortable!!! Looking at it and watching his body language and a whole load of other stuff, Jimmy is not a happy bunny at all it seems. Sad very, very sad indeed.

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