The dossier is the final straw. The ECB stands exposed as the most conniving, corrupt, mendacious, vindictive, and downright stupid organisation in Britain. They have surrendered any final remnant of authority – moral or practical – to govern a major national sport, and need to be held to account. Giles Clarke and Paul Downton must resign immediately. Third party authorities – the DCMS, say – should investigate the board’s conduct and practices. They are unfit for purpose.
They have lied to the English public about why they sacked Kevin Pietersen. The document confirms what The Full Toss, and many other blogs and commenters have always argued: he wasn’t sacked for disinterest and disengagement, but because Andy Flower didn’t like him.
Determined to get his revenge for the events of January 2009, Flower began last winter to monitor Pietersen’s every word and movement, in the hope of building a strong enough case to fire him. When Pietersen supposedly told Cook and Prior that Flower “shouldn’t be the coach any longer”, the Team Director finally had the ammunition he needed.
The document is potentially more important than Pietersen’s book. It reveals some new things and sheds further light on the fabled Melbourne/Sydney meetings. Pietersen did nothing wrong of any significance on the Australian tour. The ECB terminated his contract because Flower told them to.
In turn, Flower comes across as vain, power-mad, and deranged, writing down notes about Pietersen looking at his watch or whistling. He was enraged by Pietersen standing up to him. Matt Prior told him tales. And meanwhile, his empire had crumbled into disarray, disunity and strife.
This isn’t just according to tittle-tattle, but an official ECB document.What’s said about Flower must be true.
Many of the charges levelled against Pietersen sounds like gossip and several are ridiculous beyond words. A couple of them have minor substance. But curiously there is plenty of material here which Pietersen has omitted from his book even though it would serve his purposes.
So many questions to answer. How did the dossier enter the public domain? And why did this happen one day after Pietersen’s book was released? The document was only known or accessible to a small number of very senior figures. By what means did it pass from them to Cricinfo? An ECB spokesman says “this is the last thing we wanted”. But it still got out – and today of all days.
We’ve been told by mainstream journalists that the ECB does not leak. Then how did so many of these lines emerge previously? Why has the Daily Mail’s Paul Newman been writing prolifically about the windows, whistling and Carberry tales in particular during the last few days? And as bloggers, we were wrong to think these yarns were made up, but right to complain about how they emerged.
If the ECB doesn’t leak, then either individuals are leaking – which amounts to much the same thing – or they employ corrupt officials who sell private documents to journalists for cash. The only other explanation is that someone hacked into their computer network.
I wrote previously that I couldn’t decide which was worse – that the ECB invented the dossier story, or that it was true: that Andy Flower spent the entire Australian tour jotting things down on Post-it Notes every time Pietersen looked at him in a funny way.
The reality is even worse than we could possible have imagined. The dossier is beyond parody. It is petty and banal to a degree unimaginable even to the ECB’s most imaginative critics.
Technically, it’s not a dossier. The ECB, using a classical form of Downtonian, say “the document published by ESPNcricinfo is not what has been suggested. It is simply part of a privileged legal document produced by the ECB’s lawyers compiling information as part of the ECB’s internal due diligence ahead of the release of the Kevin Pietersen book.”
They will struggle with that defence. This particular document may have been prepared for lawyers – rather ridiculously, given the content – but it contains information which they must have already have collated for another purpose. To diminish him, traduce him, and ultimately sack him.
Last time the ECB used “due diligence”, of course, we ended up with Peter Moores.
It is now indisputable that the ECB, and Flower in particular, had a vendetta against Pietersen. He was the victim of extreme double standards. Other players could commit minor misdemeanours and either face no consequence, or in fact be defended by Lord’s. But if Pietersen stepped an inch out of line, they would come down on him like a ton of bricks.
Establishment defenders accused us of paranoid conspiracy theories. But this dossier proves we were right all along. The ECB genuinely did go out of its way to make a record of any tiny thing they could use against him, no matter how irrelevant to his performance or the functioning of the team. They really were that petty.
Which official led this process, if not Flower? Did they keep a record of similar incidents involving any other player? Would any cricketer subjected to such an insane level of scrutiny stand a chance of survival?
And so there really was no smoking gun. This is all they’ve got on him, and it don’t add up to a row of beans. For all Downton’s talk of “agendas” and corrosive dressing-room behaviour, and Cook’s notion of ‘the other side of the story’, this document proves one very important thing – Pietersen did nothing wrong on the tour of Australia.
What seems most likely is that Flower had a long-held plan to fire Pietersen after the 2013/14 Ashes. To do this, he needed a reason – hence the dossier. And that’s why, when Downton arrived for the fifth test, he spent “every ball of that match” monitoring Kevin Pietersen’s interest levels at fine leg, which was far more important than paying attention to how the other players were performing, or determining why we were 4-0 down.
Here are the document’s contents, described by Newman as “damning” and in the document as “Alleged behaviour by KP/incidents involving Kevin Pietersen (KP)”.
He was positive about the team and playing for England
At the end of the First Test, KP was awarded a present by the team in recognition of 100th Test (as is customary). During his acceptance speech KP stated that “this is the best England dressing room environment that I have ever experienced”
Why does this count as alleged behaviour or an incident?
He was the first England cricketer in history to go for a drink
Upon arrival in Adelaide for the Second Test, AF gave express instructions to players not to stay out late and not to give the scandal‐voracious press any ammunition, which KP immediately 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).
Here’s that front page. Recognise the “young player” on the right?
Yes – none other than the England T20 captain, who at the time had only played 63 tests. How was Broad sanctioned for this night out? Was an entry recorded in his dossier?
(NB – thanks to Footydoc for pointing this out – was not in the original version of this post).
He said something to a physio about going home
Prior to the Perth Test, an England team physiotherapist approached AF 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”.
He didn’t actually do it though, did he? Unlike Swann, of course. What does “KP had told him that KP was looking…” mean?
Graham Gooch told him off
Graham Gooch (GG) has a verbal go at KP on dressing room balcony after KP plays a reckless shot to get out.
The significance being?
He originally didn’t want to go to the informal meeting – you know, the one he actually did go to in the end, and when he contributed to the meeting by saying what he thought, he got fired. This is according to impartial witness Matt Prior
Immediately following England’s fourth day defeat in the Fourth Test, AF encouraged Alistair Cook (AC) ]sic] to lead a team meeting without team management in attendance to try and rally the squad before the final Test. KP told Matt Prior (MP) (and possibly others) that he had no interest in going to themeeting. MP told KP that it was “team time, not family time”
It’s good to know that with England 4-0 down in the series, the chief concern of the ECB redcaps was Pietersen’s initial reluctance to attend a meeting.
He said a nasty word
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 a bunch of useless c*nts”.
I love the use of “terrible shot” – as if that made a difference. Who chose that wording?
Given that Pietersen top scored in that test, amidst a woeful performance, at 4-0 down, his reaction was fairly understandable. It also shows that he passionately cared about the team winning. He used the word generically rather than aiming at an individual, and I can’t imagine he’s the only England cricketer ever to say something like that in a dressing room.
James Anderson called an opponent a “fat fucking c***” in a semi-public environment, and the ECB went out of their way to defend him.
Younger ones? Were there children playing?
A TV presenter and journalist, who happens to be a friend of his, said stuff on Twitter
It riled the team and management that KP allowed Piers Morgan to belittle AC and the team on social media. When asked by some of his team mates to get Piers Morgan to stop tweeting about the team, KP laughed at the players and told them to get a thicker skin.
I am not making this up, honestly.
He described Michael Carberry as ‘useless’
KP made disparaging remarks about Michael Carberry in front of other England players and team management prior to the Fourth Test, stating “Aren’t there any better players at County level? Carberry is useless”.
Paul Newman’s trump card – he’s banged on about this for months – turns out to be the two of clubs. ‘Useless’ sounds pretty mild in the big scheme of things. Perhaps not an admirable thing to say – but a sacking offence?
The real reasons
Meeting between AF and KP in AF’s hotel room (at AF’s request following AF finding out that KP saying to AC, MP and others that AF shouldn’t be the coach any longer).
‘Finding out’ is the key phrase here.
Key comments from meeting:
‐ KP stated that AC was weak, tactically inept and that AC’s latest effort to galvanise the team was “pathetic”.
‐ KP ranted, saying GS is a “c*nt”, the team was “sh*t” and having a go at AF and his coaching.
‐ KP stated that, in order to build team spirit, AF needed to “let the players go out and get p*ssed, especially the younger players”.
‐ AF told KP at the end of the meeting that he was amazed that after 7 years of working together and AF bending over backwards for KP, that KP would talk to AF like that and be so incredibly disloyal as to try to get rid of AF like that behind AF’s back. KP then left AF’s hotel room.
Note: AF did not speak to KP during the Sydney Test (or for the rest of the Tour).
Who comes out of this worse? Pietersen’s comments about Cook were being made in private, and in cricketing terms were valid points to make – not a disciplinary matter. He was perfectly entitled to criticise Flower as a coach, to his face. The drinking nights idea was fair enough. In response, Flower, the coach, refused to talk to one of his own players.
What did Flower mean by ‘bending over backwards’? At the meeting, did Pietersen say Flower “shouldn’t be the coach” or did he “try to get rid of him”. This may be in the book. which I’ve not yet read.
The use of the word “rant” – ie the exact same word used in every newspaper report about this meeting. What a coincidence! It’s as if they’re being told directly!
Sydney test
During the Fifth Test, a player tried to galvanise the team on the field with a “call to arms” address. Back in dressing room, KP criticised the player, saying that the player was “sucking up to management”. (AF stated it was incredibly damaging as KP was putting off other players from stepping up in this way.)
If true, this is the one genuine strike against Pietersen. But a career-ending one?
After the game was lost, KP walked out of their dressing room, saying “I don’t give a f*ck”.
By then he probably knew he was about to be fired.
And the pieces de resistances
‐ Following KP’s second innings dismissal, KP whistled casually on his way back to the pavilion, before coming into the dressing room.
– When Gary Ballance (who was born and raised in Zimbabwe) spoke in the dressing room, KP said it “is nice to hear another South African accent in the dressing room”.
‐ In team meetings during the tour, KP would often be deliberately disengaged (e.g. looking out of the window, looking at his watch etc whilst AF and others were talking to the team).
The kicker
AF was asked for his view on whether KP should form part of England team re‐building process. AF said that AC and the Vice‐Captain would struggle to re‐build the team with sufficient unity or strength with KP involved.
Confirmation, as if you needed it, that Flower was the axe-man. But who asked him that question, and why? Was Downton on the train into work one morning, and suddenly thought, ‘you know what, I might ask Andy Flower today if KP should form part of England team re‐building process’,
OK. Over to you. Fill your boots.
Tregaskis’s book review is now online.
I got my hands on the Full dossier documents
http://dennisdoescricket.com/50-shades-kp/
The young person out for drinks with him was Stuart Broad.
You can’t assume that because the headline says 3.30am, the photo was taken at 3.30am.
In a way, there is a smoking gun – but only because the ECB just pointed it at their own heads and pulled the trigger.
Regarding Agnew’s comments on Radio 5. He said KP was on the beer with 2 younger players and a picture was published in an Aussie paper but there were other senior players in the picture who didn’t get criticised.
A “privileged legal document” ???
As Vaughan just tweeted, ‘never heard so much bollocks in all my time’.
Loved the bit about ‘allowing’ Piers Morgan to do his thing.
The “two young players” who went out with KP for a drink in Australia included Stuart Broad, Captain of England’s T20 team!!!
I, and dozens of veterans of the Guardian blogs, feel thoroughly vindicated, quite frankly. Am I satisfied? No, I’m bloody livid.
Just one tiny example: the “terrible shot” at Melbourne. The description of that incident – just like Downton’s “disinterested” observation – takes zero account of context. Zero. Absolute zero. Pietersen knuckled down in both innings, the lower order fell to bits like under 10s. They deserved to feel his tongue. So he attacked Johnson: what else do you want him to do? He had far more cause to do so than Cook did at Adelaide. Dmitri has made the same point about that match time and time again.
It was Flower. Always. Clear as day to anyone who hadn’t spent the previous four years fawning all over him.
Interesting that the Guardian report parrots, pretty uncritically, the ECB line, despite its inherent risibility.
In contrast, the Telegraph is scathing.
By “interesting” you mean “depressingly predictable”, right?
I don’t mean to sound snarky, but that’s the way the Guardian rolls when it comes to the ECB.
Gale, KP, Flower, Downton, even Clarke and Srinivasan.
Interesting that they are persisting in the ECB line, despite the dodgy dossier being outed.
Contrast with Jonathan Agnew who calls it simply embarrassing.
The Telegraph, having run with their Pietersen exclusive, are rightly making hay – and Derek Pringle has apparently gone on holiday..
Here’s the Telegraph piece – interesting stuff on Ajmal Shahzad.
I’ve seen these sorts of faux-disciplinary documents before – trumped up nonsense from some office Napoleon – and it’s easy to see the innocuous truth behind some of these incidents. In this case you really don’t need to look any further than the Adelaide drinking episode. The document deliberately makes out it’s some kid, a doe-eyed U19s player on his first tour. This vulnerable child turns out to be…Stuart Broad.
It’s really just desperate. If you really want to you can turn any light-hearted remark or joke in to a damning statement in black and white, or if you’re prepared to twist it enough. This just lays bare what an unacceptable working environment the England team was. Who could really do their job properly with little twerp on their elbow waiting to write down their first slip of the tongue and report it to teacher for disciplinary proceedings?
Some hilariously embarrassing stuff floating about in there. Dear oh dear, the senior management surely now find themselves in a very difficult position.
Now KP has had his day, my well of sympathy has run dry for him. I’m sad he was dropped and it remains a completely dunderheaded decision based on off the field non reason, as well all suspected.
I feel a bit sorry for the over promoted Cook, I know I shouldn’t but the impression of him unable muster any sort of control over that team is just sad. No wonder his form has completely collapsed. It can’t have been a very nice 9 months for him, just as it probably hasn’t been that great for KP.
That the initial impression we all had that this could have been so easily avoided has been proven correct isn’t really providing much succour, it’s just bloody annoying.
The dossier definitely vindicates the views of so many posters. The ECB should be thoroughly ashamed. But, as I have said many times BTL at the Guardian, people like Giles Clarke, Paul Downton, Andy Flower, Peter Moores and others are incapable of shame, honesty and integrity. They should all be forcibly removed from the England set-up without further ado.
Sometimes it is quite nice to be ‘outside cricket’.
Well, it’s been an interesting and full days reading all round! Amongst all the bruhaha, mud slinging and downright bloody lies there is one voice missing, bloody Pringle! The Telegraph’s been excellent today, in my view, and yet, not one bloody pip, nor squeak, from their cricket correspondent? Has he been sacked? Has he crawled back under the rock from whence he came, or has he been summoned for a kick in the bollocks from Giles Clarke for not trying hard enough? All these questions, and more, need answering!!
Mike Selvey, who is reputed to be Flower’s friend, has also gone missing.
It would appear Selvey is indeed on holiday – https://twitter.com/selvecricket/status/518785523054555136
A cricket writer booking a holiday for the week KP’s book comes out is like an accountant choosing April 5th. Not likely to be a coincidence..
Disengaged ?
Pringle or Selvey saying anything at this point would sound utterly ridiculous. I think they and their editors probably realize the best course of action is silence/holiday. The only thing they could really do is go for a massive mea culpa, and I don’t think they’ve got it in them. Selvey’s dished out too much condescending abuse. He’s shown before he gets very, very upset if there’s even the slightest hint he may be proved wrong. This would actually kill him.
Pringle has spoken. It wasn’t bullying. It wasn’t even banter. It’s just an essential part of team dynamics! https://twitter.com/derekpringle/status/519608645101682688
I’m not surprised. I doubt either man will go the full Newman/Henderson, but that’s only because they’re both brighter than the gruesome Mail hacks. Expect a lot of “Flower should be remembered for…. not….”.
[…] I hadn’t read Maxie’s tour de force. Read it here. Hat […]
It’s depressing that in a parallel world, someone (hell, ANYONE) other than Downton arrived in Australia, realised that something was rotten in the England set-up, that Flower no longer had the dressing room, and decided to bring in a new coach from outside the whole set-up.
Said coach then draws a line under the Ashes, tells the senior players to stop acting like pricks and if they don’t, they’ll be out, then puts an arm round them and asks for their input about ways to improve the team’s fortunes. He then sets about selecting the best 3 XIs he can for England in each form of the game, paying due heed to ONLY the following factors:
Form
Fitness
Record / Potential
He also gives consideration to the need to blood a new generation of players, whilst accepting that an experienced backbone to the team is essential.
He then selects the captain for each of those three sides from the XI selected, rather than picking a captain and then ten further players.
Cook enjoys a tremendous summer against SL and India, freed of the captaincy, and then retires to the farm and his young family once the ODIs and T20 games begin, safe in the knowledge his next stint in an England shirt is many months away.
Etc etc.
It’s a well-worn technique to inculcate a new set of eyes – particularly a new boss – to your specific bias before they have a chance to form their own opinion. That way everything they see is through the prism of that preconception.
You’re aware that an outsider may very well see the obvious – that you are clearly at fault – so you get in first and make sure they see things the right way. It’s surprisingly effective and very common.
Sounds as if that is exactly what happened. Paul Downton has told us what happened, in fact. He turns up in Sydney, England is in disarray (Cook is utterly out of his depth, Trott has gone home sick, Swann has retired injured, Anderson is playing with a broken rib, Prior is playing with a tear in his hamstring, Finn is ‘unselectable’, Rankin looked like he should be put down, Bresnan was picked injured, Borthwick was playing as the spinner – they found him at my local club, Northern Districts, an amateur side, and even they don’t think he’s a bowler – and they’re heading for 5-0). Some people might be excused for thinking this a management issue. Flower gets right to the point as soon as Downton arrives: “We have a problem. KP”
People get caught up in the moment and say stupid things, but history will remember blaming KP for that fiasco as akin to blaming the failure of the charge of the Light Brigade on the trooper who whistled whilst he charged the Russian cannons.
Except for the part about blooming news players that’s pretty much what CA did with Mickey Arthur.
The document is devastating for Flower. He comes across as completely nuts. Constantly dreaming up schemes to catch KP out. Even setting up a players meeting and getting the captain to encourage input from players. Then using it against the chosen target. There is a whiff of the Gestapo about some of the techniques used to entrap, and inform on others.
I wonder if the 88 page diet sheet was another elaborate scheme to catch out a player you had it in for. This is also a devastating document for Mr Newman of the Mail. Because he has inadvertently entrapped himself. Hung by his own dirty dealings with the ECB. The man has not written a word of his own thinking. He has just regurgitated ECB leaks.
As for the attacks on Piers Morgans twitter feed,this is just too funny. The England management were out of their minds. Completely insane. Flower should resign immediately. How can he be coaching the next generation of young players when they know he will stoop to these levels of deceit?
Instead of the power-mad dictator I had imagined, Flower emerges like Elmer Fudd: “Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits,”
Spot on.
KP sounded like he fell into just about every trap set for him, but hell, he had reason to be paranoid. They really were out to get him.
Flower sounds, I don’t know what. All this stuff, it’s so petty and vindinctive as to be unreal.
What can the ECB do now to rein this in? They are being SO exposed as grand-scale charlatans.
From http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop: “The Gish Gallop is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of small arguments that their opponent cannot possibly answer or address each one in real time. More often than not, these myriad arguments are full of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments — the only condition is that there be many of them, not that they be particularly compelling on their own. They may be escape hatches or “gotcha” arguments that are specifically designed to be brief, but take a long time to unravel”
This definition seems like a perfect description of the ECB’s dossier (or “due diligence”) to me. They have no good case against KP, so they seek to overwhelm his supporters with weak arguments.
This specific issue has come up recently as a matter of serious law, not just this sort of thing. Some recent high-profile rape and sexual assault cases have shone a light on a very questionable practice; that of ‘bundling’ cases. Essentially throwing so many accusations at a defendant that a jury is left thinking ‘Well surely they can’t ALL be making it up?’. Individually, it’s likely none of the accusations would result in a conviction (or even a trial) but bundled together they have the effect of being almost impossible to defend.
Defending this style of attack is like bailing out a sinking boat with a fork.
It can backfire, as the defence can spend a lot of time carefully demolishing one of the charges and then say “now, if this one was complete bollocks, do you really trust the prosecution?”
But that’s in a court room in front of a jury. In this case it looks more like Flowers was trying to come up with a justification for a decision he had already made.
It can, but a lot of people only see the weight of accusations, not the quality. That awful phrase “There’s no smoke without fire” gets an airing. Hideous.
“Defending this style of attack is like bailing out of a sinking boat with a fork.”
Sorry, I feel like I may have been a bit unclear – I’ve been anti ECB throughout the KP saga – I just wanted to point out this very accurate description of the awful methods they used to justify sacking KP. Specifically, a method that is frequently used to justify completely untenable positions.
No, I understood. I was just saying it’s actually a subject of legal and academic debate as a technique. It is indeed effective and it is what the ECB has been doing.
The ECB wheeled out superannuated MacLaurin of Tesco this morning to defend the “pamphlet of paltriness” (c. Telegraph).
“Evidence of schoolboy behaviour”; “No issues need addressing”; “all blow over in a couple of weeks”; “the game is bigger than any individual”….
Heads in sand.
They really do run English cricket like a private gemtlemen’s club in Pall Mall. They are clueless. If they can’t see how crazy Flower and his obsession with getting rid of KP had become, then they are not fit for purpose. Interesting that Tesco is not in great shakes either at the moment . Although MacLaurin is no longer running it. The ECB complacency and jobs for the boys attitude stinks.
Congratulations MacLaurin. You and the ECB are driving people like me away from the game I have loved for decades. The vindictiveness that was dished out to KP is now being repeated in their campaign against Andrew Gale. It seems to be the blueprint for every action against anyone the ECB takes against.
Here is a conspiracy theory.,I have just gone on the BBC I player site to listen to the 5 live show from last night. I came in half way through. So I decided to listen to it again this morning. Yet the first 30 minutes seem to have been edited out. This was the bit about the dossier and the section I heard ,Agnew was being quite reasonable.
Yet when I play it this morning it starts at 7.30 pm. Now this may just be a mistake. I have tried listing to the previous show to see if it is on the end of that. But it is not. That show finishes at 7.00 pm. Mark Chapmans show claims to start at 7pm but on my I player he starts just before 7.30.
I would be greatful if others could try this out and see if it is just me. Surely the BBC would not do this deliberately?
THe phone in with George Dobell & Simon Hughes at 10pm isn’t up either. But Phil William’s afterwards is
Hmm…… it seems a little suspicious to me. BBC covering for the establishment again? Surely not!
The very last exchange of the podcast is worth listening to.
George Dobell flags Simon Hughes up about his criticism of KP over the text messages thing.
Hughes then admits to badmouthing captains in post-match discussions with opposition players at various times in his career.
However, he argues that this is a lot different than doing it via text messages, mentions something about modern technology, and then unfortunately the show ends! Hilarious.
So it is ok to bad mouth your captain in a bar, but to do so by the wholly different method of text messages suddenly becomes a sackable offence?
What a doos.
The ECB and their media mates have always tried to elevate texgate to the assination of President Kennedy. They keep trying to play the high moral ground card.
But if they felt so strongly they should have never had him back. That was the high moral position. Once they let him back in, and he won the test match in India (Which Cook and Flower will be living off for the rest of their careers) they effectively took a self interest decision. So the moral high ground argument goes out the window.
It is all there on the 5 Live Sports Special podcast feed, listening to it now. Agnew particularly down on the dossier idiocy. It’s 98 mins long, clais to have the hughes Dobell stuff on it
The podcast still has everything in it.
Re the night out in Adelaide – the ECB is reported at the time to have said it was no issue that the players were out. Why did it then become an issue, if we are to believe that the dossier is a valid assessment of KP’s sackable offences?
http://www1.skysports.com/cricket/news/12340/9053976/ashes-ecb-backs-stuart-broad-kevin-pietersen-and-jonny-bairstow-over-adelaide-night-out
Classic ECB double standards, really. I’d love to think that some good would come out of this mess and they’ll take a long, hard look in the mirror and seek to reform the way they run their organisation. Sadly, it’s probably never going to happen.
Great spot.
Maxie, I think there’s one important piece of context here that you are overlooking: this is not a contemporaneous document, but one compiled specifically in anticipation of the publication of KP’s book. A book of whose contents the ECB had no warning; indeed, there are reports they have spent the last 72 hours desperately trying to get their hands on a copy.
“During his acceptance speech KP stated that “this is the best England dressing room environment that I have ever experienced”
The reason for the inclusion of this obviously-not-damning nugget can only be divined in this context: the ECB is trying to construct a narrative in which they discredit KP’s claims of a dysfunctional dressing room by showing that his claims are wildly inconsistent with his behaviour earlier on the tour. In other words, that this was a situation he caused through his petulance and unwillingness to be part of a team.
What this document shows all too clearly is an utterly panicked ECB. They had no sight of the KP book in advance, but had a pretty good idea of the sort of accusations it was likely to contain. So they compiled evidence they hoped would discredit the claims they expected, evidence they might produce in statements or (if necessary) legal action. What is extraordinary is that anybody thought the pathetic school playground fare it contains would sway a single opinion on the matter. And if it was deliberately leaked, the person responsible is both dishonest and hopelessly naive.
Why had they collated all this material in the first place? It must have existed long before.
“AF did not speak to KP during the Sydney Test ”
This is hilarious. You’re the coach of the team, and at a critical juncture you decide you’re going to go and sulk and refuse to talk to you best batsman? What kind of message does that send the team.
I’ve said it before, Flower is an absolute disgrace of a human being. He has the maturity and professional integrity of a spoilt 8 year old and doesn’t have the capacity to manage a team of bin-men.
What went wrong in Australia? Well I think we now know: once Strauss retired, the last person connected to the English team with a single shred of maturity and leadership ability had gone. Flower, Swann, Anderson, Prior, Pietersen are all juvenile egomaniacs and Cook was timid and ineffectual, with no natural leadership skills or ability to hold things together. Of course, only one of those was being paid to manage the rest, so his crime is infinitely worse.
Things were always going to fall apart under the first sign of pressure.
Flower and Prior should have been told never to come back, and so probably should Cook.
Might I add that most of the press made absolutely nothing of Flower being put in charge of the Lions earlier this summer.
And they made even less of this, which I thought was an indication that even his closest ally from the glory days didn’t necessarily think the sun shone out of Flower’s rear end.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/andrew-strauss-says-andy-flower-4027001
http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/cricket/andrew-strauss-questions-ecb-decision-to-hand-andy-flower-england-lions-role-9657387.html
I don’t think Strauss comes out of it very well at all. Clearly not an effective leader given the incidence of bullying in Bangladesh that he was unable to do anything about. A request to the bowlers from the Captain and Coach on that tour to ‘tone it down’ was ignored.
I wrote this on Dmitri’s site and I think it is valid question. Why has this dossier been leaked? I think There are 3 possibilities.
First, the ECB genuinely thought this would help their case. If this is true it just shows how insane they have become.
Second, someone hacked in and has made off with this dossier /report. Seems unlikely to me.
Third, maybe someone at the ECB has leaked this to do harm to the ECB. Could it be there are people or a person inside the ECB who has had enough and decided to start leaking the stuff they don’t want us to see? This is very bad news for them if true, because who knows what might start coming out?
I would love to think this was leaked to do damage to the ECB by a whistleblower, sick of the lies and deceit. However I suspect it was leaked because they thought it would help their case. Such is the bone headed thinking that now runs English.
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Even with the Carberry comment, the ECB implicitly agreed with the thoughts KP expressed: they dropped him after the series.
Maybe “useless” was excessive, but it turns out that both the ECB and KP thought that Carberry wasn’t good enough to be in the team.
So the complaint against KP is effectively “He said something that we were also thinking”.
Selvey might be on holiday, but he’s somehow making sure that the Guardian stays on message. This just in from that once esteemed newspaper :
“Perhaps ironically, Pietersen is alleged to have had a different attitude towards other people being criticised via Twitter. The ECB internal email that made its way into the public domain on Tuesday alleges that when asked by team-mates to request that his friend and defender, Piers Morgan, stop tweeting about the team, Pietersen laughed and told the players to “get a thicker skin”.
As somebody has said elsewhere, the irony is there. But they are too thick to notice it in the correct way.
Yes, that was Zephirine and I making the same point at about the same time.
[…] to the dossier, which we first analysed here, and some of you have also discussed here. The Daily Telegraph’s Paul Hayward nails […]
The DCMS angle is a good point to raise, and it’s part of the issue here.
It’s the ECB’s job to develop the best possible National side from the available players, but how and to whom are they accountable for their performance in this?
After the events of last winter and this summer it seems beyond any doubt that management must have failed in their professional capacity at least as badly as the players on the field, and probably worse. If a basic management structure and ethos can survive a winter literally heaving with a jostling mass of some of the worst team performances in living memory followed by an English season with few convincing signs of recovery and many more of continued problems at every level, then is there any conceivable threshold of failure that might lead to real change?
er, let’s just ignore the fact that I accidentally capitalised “national”.
[…] first is that they have nothing to say which would be remotely convincing or satisfactory. As the dossier, revealed, the ECB had no genuine reasons for firing Pietersen, beyond ill-defined dislike and […]
[…] evidence which emerges from the dossier argues against Pringle’s assertion that Flower “had no agenda except to keep England […]