“The ECB wanted to investigate. First they wanted my phone. They said they wanted to take it to a top forensic investigation firm that would download all the software off my phone and search keywords and try to find out if there was anything said since the start of the summer about any of the players and staff”.
This, according to Kevin Pietersen in his autobiography, was how the ECB sought to investigate claims that he had sent derogatory BlackBerry messages about his team-mates to members of the South Africa team in August 2012. They have not denied his account, and he is very unlikely to have made it up.
The ECB were determined to prove him guilty. They wanted him to be guilty. So they acted like a spouse who’s convinced their partner is having an affair – sniffing collars for perfume and trawling through receipts and trouser pockets until they find the evidence they crave.
The custodians of our national game asked Pietersen to hand over private property. This would have enabled them, his employers, to access not only private messages, but every byte of data on his device – which could have included all manner of sensitive information, such as banking details or messages to his wife and family.
What on earth made Hugh Morris (then England MD) feel he was entitled to ask for this, or that Pietersen was obliged to co-operate? How would you feel if your boss made such a request? In the end, the PCA told Lord’s that Pietersen could not be expected to comply.
Reportedly, Andy Flower also stormed into the South African dressing room and beseeched the opposition players to let him inspect their phones. This may not be true, of course.
It is telling that the ECB were prepared to spend the money, and make the effort, to engage a forensic research agency. And that they wished to investigate not only the ‘doos’ messages, but “anything said since the start of the summer”. Mission creep.
Why were the ECB so motivated to ensnare Pietersen with hard evidence? Because they wanted an excuse to nail him? What made them so convinced he had a case to answer?
We’re not privy to private conversations which may have told them more. But in terms of the public domain, they would only have known what the Daily Mail reported, which amounted to little more than a vague rumour – that he had sent “derogatory” messages, content unknown, to players unknown. Neither the ‘doos’ or tactical allegations were relevant at first – they only emerged nine days later.
It was not documented who had seen the texts or how they had reached the public domain. No journalist, either then or since, said they had seen them at first hand. No South African corroborated the story. So the ECB had nothing to go on bar gossip.
That didn’t stop Giles Clarke, later in the process, from insisting that Pietersen sign an affidavit that he had not passed on tactical information in the messages. Pietersen had always denied anything along those lines. There was no evidence to the contrary. Why not just accept his word, rather than require a legal document? Did they take a perverse pleasure in treating him like a criminal?
(NB: I am grateful for Clivejw for providing the affidavit line in the comments below – the paragraph above was added after the original posting).
Earlier in the summer they’d had a similar issue to deal with – KP Genius. How did their approaches to the twin sets of claims compare?
At the outset, the KP Genius case had two main differences. Firstly, the content (the Tweets) was in the public domain and there was no dispute about what had been said, or that it had been said in public. Secondly, there was evidence credible enough to necessitate an investigation. A former England captain, with no obvious personal interest at stake, said he was told by the account’s creator that three England players were involved (Broad, Swann, and Bresnan). This much was confirmed yesterday, when Alec Stewart spoke to the Daily Telegraph.
“I absolutely stand by what is written in Pietersen’s book,” said Stewart, England’s most capped Test cricketer. “I went and told Hugh Morris and Andy Flower on separate occasions what I had been told by this fella.”
Stewart said that he was approached by Bailey during the first Test against South Africa at the Oval in 2012 three times. “I said to him some of it [the account] was very funny and that he had got some good information. He said, ‘Yes, I do’. He then said, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ I said, ‘It depends’. He went away and then came back and named three players who had access to the account password.
“If that was the case it did not sit well with me. I passed it on to the ECB and it was up to them how they dealt with it. I was doing it for the good of the England team and how the hierarchy dealt with it was up to them but I felt they had to be made aware of it.”
This amounted to pretty strong evidence. It certainly didn’t prove the case – and the three players deny such involvement – but was substantial enough for action to be required. So what did the ECB do?
Their responses have featured in today’s news, but I can’t find an official statement on their website or Twitter feed. So it seems – correct me if wrong – that they haven’t deigned to put out an official statement to the public. Instead, newsrooms have rung the ECB press office and been told a few lines over the phone.
According to the Telegraph:
A spokesman for the ECB confirmed the investigation will not be reopened and that Stewart’s concerns were looked into at the time by Morris.
“There was a very thorough investigation and a very thorough report at the time sent to the ECB board and the players stated categorically both in public and in private that they were not involved.”
How thorough was the investigation? What did it involve and whom did it concern? Did the ECB ask Bresnan, Broad and Swann to hand over their phones to a forensic research firm for data analysis? Did they ask them to sign affidavits? Or did they just take their word for it?
Hugh Morris: you weren’t sending those Tweets, were you, Stu?
Stuart Broad: nah.
Hugh Morris: thought not.
What did the public statements of non-involvement amount to? On the ECB’s press site, I can only find a statement relating to Stuart Broad.Its tone and scope are instructive.
The ECB today issued the following statement on behalf of Stuart Broad in relation to the setting up of a parody Twitter account for Kevin Pietersen by a member of the public.
Broad said: “Following last night’s statement by Mr Richard Bailey that he was responsible for creating a parody Twitter account in Kevin Pietersen’s name, I would like to confirm that I had no involvement in this whatsoever.
“I met with the Managing Director – England Cricket, Hugh Morris this morning and assured him that I did not play any role in the creation of this account or provide Mr Bailey with any information regarding Kevin Pietersen or the England team.
“As has been widely reported Mr Bailey is a friend of mine, but we had no conversations regarding this issue at all and I am pleased that he has now decided to close the parody account down. “
ECB Managing Director Hugh Morris added: “Having discussed this matter with Stuart, I am fully satisfied that he acted in a professional manner at all times and did not breach any confidences regarding fellow England players.
“ECB also accepts the apology Mr Bailey offered last night to the England team via his Twitter account and his reassurances that no professional cricketers were involved in the creation of this site.”
Is it me, or does Morris sound relieved and pleased that Broad is off the hook? Does the wording linger rather on the issue of ‘creation’ of the account. Does it absolutely rule out any kind of participation?
Compare the tone of that press release to this one, from 15th August 2012, in the wake of the first text claims.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has received an apology from Kevin Pietersen and an admission that he did send ‘provocative’ text messages to members of the South African team.
Kevin Pietersen has said in his apology: “I did send what you might call provocative texts to my close friends in the SA team.
“The texts were meant as banter between close friends. I need to rein myself in sometimes.
“I apologise to Straussy and the team for the inappropriate remarks at the press conference and for the texts. I truly didn’t mean to cause upset or tension particularly with important games at stake.”
England Managing Director Hugh Morris said: “We are in receipt of Kevin’s apology, but further discussions need to take place to establish whether it is possible to regain the trust and mutual respect required to ensure all parties are able to focus on playing cricket and to maintain the unity of purpose that has served us so well in recent years.
“Critically, those discussions should take place behind closed doors, rather than in the media spotlight.
“A successful conclusion to this process is in everyone’s best interests and is required for Kevin Pietersen’s potential selection in all forms of the game to be considered.
“At the moment we have an important Investec Test match to focus on and therefore ECB will make no further comment until such time as is appropriate.”
In this statement Pietersen admits wrongdoing and apologises unequivocally. Morris’s response is grudging, cold, and non-committal. He doesn’t welcome Pietersen’s apology, he is just ‘in receipt’ of it.
On 3rd October 2012, the ECB issued this statement about Pietersen’s return to the team.
ECB and Kevin Pietersen confirm that agreement has been reached concerning a process for his re-integration into the England Team during the remainder of 2012. Upon completion of the programme, the England Selectors will consider Kevin for future matches.
Kevin Pietersen has apologised to Andrew Strauss and wishes to express to all those who support England his regrets at the impact the recent controversies have had on the England Team. He now wishes to put the events of the summer behind him and to focus on regaining his place in the England Team.
With regards the issue of the BBM messages, due to the fact that Kevin had not retained the BBM messages, this matter has been successfully concluded through a binding assurance provided to ECB by Kevin. Kevin conceded that the messages exchanged were provocative. ECB is satisfied, following receipt of this binding assurance, that to the best of his recollection, Kevin did not convey any messages which were derogatory about the England Captain, the England Team Director, the ECB or employees of the ECB. Furthermore, there was no tactical information whatsoever provided to members of the South African Touring Party.
In other words, this meant: ‘there is no evidence he did either of the two mains things which were claimed, and he denies them, so I suppose we’ll have to put it with it, and let him play again after a ‘process’ is ‘completed”.
The ECB desperately wanted Pietersen to be guilty and were annoyed and disappointed when they couldn’t prove it, despite their best efforts. The ECB desperately hoped Stuart Broad wasn’t guilty, and were delighted when he told them he wasn’t.
And the ECB found out that they’d be sued by KP for a LOT of money if they fired him then in 2012 with the ‘evidence’ they had.
An excellent article showing ECB’s double standards. The board is made up of liars and hypocrites as far as I am concerned and the same applies to its media pals. How I wish we could get rid of the lot and start afresh!
Hugh M addresses the issue of double standards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icDB3kRKPg
There is simply nothing BrassEye can’t teach you about the way the modern media works.
Excellent!
You really couldn’t make it up. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot. Why would any organisation want to be associated with these fools. Waitrose is this the sort of cretins you want your company logo in front of? I would be running for the hills to get away from them.
Andrew Strauss has just given very diplomatic interview on sky. He says “KP, AF and MP should all be remembered for the great service they gave to the team”. He didn’t deny or confirm anything.
I am interested in Jonathan Agnew’s involvement with the fake twitter account. In particular how can he claim,as he does that the twitter account was not run from the dressing room? How does he know this? If instead he said’ “according to the people involved, the account was not run from the dressing room.” That would be different. He would be reporting their claims. But he goes further, he reports it as fact not opinion. Once again, how does he know?
Well, you might say his connections to the father of the person who runs the account (drinks in his local pub) gives him access to information we don’t know. Agnew has been very forcefully disputing this bit of KPs claims in the book, that it was run from the dressing room. But why does Agnew feel the need to go to war on this issue?
What does “run from the dressing room”‘mean? And what does it mean to Agnew? I would say…..if any player had acces to the account and was tweeting from their house or a hotel room that counts as ‘from the dressing room.’ Agnew seems to think it only applies if they were tweeting from the actual changing room. But I would go further. If the players were not tweeting at all, but passing on titbits of information,that still counts as from the dressingroom for me. After all, that is what they accuse KP of doing re texgate. (Texting things to other people)
Having now received the book, I am able to reproduce this passage, which is relevant to the discussion. There was a prima facie case for a full investigation into the fake account, not simply taking someone’s word for their noninvolvement. If Piers Morgan can piece the evidence together, so could the ECB or their lawyers.
I would also like to recall that Pietersen is not without a sense of humour, as anyone who reads the book or follows his twitter feed can see. When he first learned of KP Genius, he followed it and even retweeted some stuff. It was only when he found out from Stewart about the possible involvement of team mates that he felt betrayed.
Thanks, Clive. My own copy, although despatched by Amazon yesterday, has stubbornly refused to arrive yet today.
The fact he engaged with the account at first is sometimes held against him. But it’s unlikely he would have made such a fuss about KPG had it not been for the ridiculous over-reaction to the BBM messages.
Has Flower resigned yet? And if not why not?
I find it staggering after all we have learned in the last week that Flower is still in a job. The ECB is standing by an a man who behaved like someone unhinged. The cover up of the conspiracy to run a fake twitter account is just one piece of this crazy jigsaw.
I completely agree – for me, since the dossier, the story is as much about Flower, and the revelation that the ECB charges against him were ridiculous, as it is about Pietersen, He is no longer involved with England, but Flower is.
Of everything that’s happened – the whitewash, the poor performances this summer, the cover up, the bullying, and so on and so on, only one person has lost their job.
Meanwhile, Graeme Smith has added further corroboration for the bullying:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/kevinpietersen/11151167/Kevin-Pietersen-is-right-there-was-bullying-in-the-England-team-and-we-used-it-against-them-says-Graeme-Smith.html
Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting, Alec Stewart. Yet the ECB would rather stand with Flower, and the likes of Newman, and Agnew.
They seem determined to front it out. Never concede wrong doing, Never apologise, and Never change course. I may have to put my love affair with cricket away, and find something else to do in the summer. I pretty much now view the ECB with a loathing hatred.
Oooh, what is this? Sedition? I open the book randomly at the chapter Le Grand Fromage and this is what I see:
Clive, He probably didn’t speak much in case it was taken down, and used in evidence against him in some nutty dossier.
The idea this man is now overseeing the next generation of young players is frankly horrifying.
Such as, perhaps, the “bonding exercise” that proved he wasn’t captaincy material?
Flower over ran his stay by over a year ( witness the 0-0 draw in NZ) and the home Ashes last year saw the most boring cricket I’ve seen in a long time. I saw 220 runs in 98 overs at the Oval whilst at lunch at Durham we were 55-1. Not sure why he is still in a job. He left Eng in a worse position than he found them ( Moores left Eng with a decent line up)
Anyway reading it all, it makes you wonder how this all didn’t come to a head sooner. Sadly there are no winners
Recommend this piece by Dan Hodges:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100289138/the-kevin-pietersen-saga-shows-the-rotten-mess-at-the-heart-of-english-cricket-at-last/
More from the book: As part of the ludicrous “reintegration” process, Pietersen has to apologise to each member of the team separately on a one-to-one basis — including to people who have never had a problem with him and vice versa, like Trott and Bell. He describes these particular interviews as taking the form “Hi, guys, lovely to see you guys, bye guys.”
Cook and Flower and a moderator sit in at every single meeting. For which, by the way, Pietersen has been forced to fly half the way around the world, from Dubai, to a hotel in Oxford, whose location was supposed to be secret. So naturally, the press knew all about it. [For some reason, the meeting with Broad doesn’t take place until Mumbai.]
Before the apology to the Big Cheese, Flower takes 15 minutes before bringing Cheese in. This, Pietersen suggests, is to square their story about James Taylor, which KP claims Flower had just admitted that he had given to the press. KP countered that, in that case, you must have got it from Prior.
What story? Pietersen says that apart from a private conversation with Flower (I’ve talked about this before), the only time he had said anything about Taylor was after the latter was out at Headingley. Prior came to the wicket and was so nervous the South Africans were laughing. KP told him, hey, the wicket isn’t doing anything, Taylor was just making it look difficult for the last half hour. This was obviously a joke to calm a nervous batting partner — Taylor had batted largely untroubled until he got out. This story was reported back to Flower, who told it to the press. Along the way, the story acquired numerous distortions and exaggerations.
So Flower spoke to Prior for 15 minutes before the latter was ushered in to accept Pietersen’s apology. By that time, Flower’s and Prior’s stories were word perfect.
Another detail I found astounding — Clarke made Pietersen sign an affidavit to say that he had not revealed any “tactical information” to the South Africans in his text messages. And looked miffed when KP asked if the other players would be signing affidavits disavowing any involvement in KP Genius.
It’s mind-boggling stuff, like a farcical version of the Inquisition. He doesn’t reveal whether he had to kiss Flower’s ring.
***
What did the players talk about in their one–to-one meetings? Mostly about the IPL. No jealously there then. Whatever issues they brought up, he had to apologise without discussion. Any little thing they had ever been annoyed about.
The meeting was fixed in Oxford so that Pietersen would have to fly all the way from Dubai where he was competing in the Champions League. The reasoning, Pietersen plausibly suggests, was:
Swann complains that KP has forced him to come to Oxford while his (Swann’s) wife is expecting a baby.
***
‘m sorry, but I can’t see how anyone can read the above passages, suck in his cheeks, and say, “But this is all so bitter! Why doesn’t he talk about cricket?” as some rather precious journalists have said in their reviews.
Great post as always Clive. The last excerpt that you highlighted was very telling about swann. He was rightly angry leaving his wife to be there, but his anger was directed at the wrong person.
Including Atherton
That is absolutely jaw-dropping – sadism, bullying, power freakery, ego tripping by Flower and Clarke.
Almost certainly, they wanted to make the process so painful for Pietersen that he’d buckle and flounce out. It reminds me of Endurance, the Japanese game show made famous by Clive James in the 1980s.
They must have been furious that he got through it.
Thanks very much, Clive, for posting this up.
I think it’s only fair to clarify Alec Stewart’s position.
I went to school with Stewie and have known him for 40 years. I’ve had a lengthy chat with him and he is perturbed about the reaction to his involvement. The last thing he wanted was people screaming ‘liar’ at Swann, Broad and Co.
Stewie went public yesterday because Richard Bailey was contesting Alec’s version of events. He felt his integrity was being questioned.
Back in 2012, on the strength of what Bailey told him during the Oval Test, Alec reported his concerns to Hugh Morris and Andy Flower.
Swann, Broad and Bresnan were the players he mentioned (not Anderson, as tweeted by KP). He is not suggesting that any of them did access the parody account – only that Bailey told him they had. Stewie actually wonders whether Bailey was showing off.
Swann, Broad and Bresnan have all insisted strongly that they did not contribute to the account and certainly the consistent style of the tweets suggests they were typed by the same person (Bailey, presumably).
They knew about it! What does that say about their treatment of a team mate? Good on Stewart for bringing to the attention of the ecb. As for KP getting it wrong, well we have all done that haven’t we? Some more than others!!!!!
Also, John, if the leaked ECB dossier is the ‘LIst of 50 Misdemeanours’ you triumphantly crowed about months ago, it defies believe that the England coach was busy assembling this pathetic list, cataloguing every pettifogging semi-lapse by one player while another suffered a mental breakdown, another flounced off the tour, and the rest collapsed in a heap on the pitch.
That certainly is a plausible theory, John, and maybe it’s the one you get after applying Occam’s razor: it allows everyone to be telling the truth apart from Bailey, who was and is lying out of a kind of boastfulness.
However, then there is Broad’s disingenuous claim not to have known of the Twitter account before Headingley (see above), blushing when Pietersen said the creator was living in your house.
Also, whether or not they had access to the account and whether or not they were contributing inside information to Bailey, the fact remains that half the team were giggling at Pietersen behind his back while he was out scoring 149 runs and taking four wickets.
Some people clearly know more about this than they are telling. (*cough* Agnew *cough*). I doubt whether we have heard the last of it.
But the most important point is that there was prima facie a much stronger case for investigating KP Genius than for creating an enormous fuss over “text-gate” — a truly non-existent controversy. It looks suspiciously as though text-gate was stirred up precisely in order to cover up KP Genius. Furthermore, the sadistic humiliation of the “reintegration” interviews, which I find quite disgusting even to read about, are out of all proportion to the alleged offence and smack of sadism and bullying. They clearly hoped he would flounce out of them, but his desire to play for England again carried him through.
I’m sure Bailey was showing off, John, but it is stretching credulity to breaking point to suggest that Stuart Broad is telling the truth about KP Genius. It was set up by a friend of his, who was in Broad’s house when he set it up, and who then told an impartial witness that Broad had the password to it.
At the very least Bailey must have had conversations about KP with Broad, following which he set up a twitter account publicly mocking KP. Broad seem to have had no problem with that; and neither did the ECB.
According to Alec Stewart. the ECB’s “investigation” into Broad’s involvement didn’t even involve contacting Stewart to confirm his account and check he hadn’t missed anything out. The double standards are self-evident.
Thanks, John, although I don’t think anything above misrepresents Stewart. I’ve not sensed that anyone thinks negatively about his actions – he comes across as someone caught in a peculiar position trying to do the right thing for all concerned.
As mentioned below, the point of my piece above was not to portray the Genius Three as ‘guilty’, but to illustrate the double standards employed by the ECB when investigating the twin issues.
I think it is a bit convenient that Broad went on holiday the exact same week that KP’s book was launched……
I wonder if he was avised to leave until this all ‘blows over.’
I agree Dave. Quite a few protagonists are “on holiday” and others conspicuous by their absence. The fact that the Captain has not refuted these allegations speaks volumes. As KP says” he is a decent guy”, maybe he cannot bring himself to lie outright like others have done.
Every player that sat in those “integration meetings” should hang their heads in SHAME. Whether they were made to or not. I suspect quite a few of them relished it. You enabled a bully to enjoy his gratification. That, for me was the most damming thing about the book. Is this what is meant by team ethos?, team unity?, harmony in the dressing room? . The most shameful episode in English Cricket History.
Or maybe they are on holiday because they have been working all summer and this is now the off-season? Just an alternative theory…
Honestly there is more than enough here to condemn the ECB and others who have been accessories to this mess, without going to silly extremes. Suggesting that investigating the parody account should have been a ‘much stronger’ priority than text-gate is just bizarre! How many of us would have said that at the time? The fact is they were both appalling incidents, and more crucially, completely avoidable. But they were allowed to happen as a result of poor man-management.
The ECB have shown themselves to be inept, outdated and clueless. Don’t undermine their charge sheet with hyperbole, let them hang themselves. That’s one job that they are performing with aplomb…
You’re right on the holiday front – none of the players should be expected to organise their holidays around Pietersen’s publishing dates, and nor should individual players be expected to front up for the ECB as an organisation.
To me, both Textgate and KP Genius were ridiculously trivial incidents which somehow escalated to ludicrous magnitudes. I can understand why Pietersen makes such a big deal out of it because he was demonised for the texts out of all proportion.
The most likely scenario is that Broad and co laughed along with the Tweets and probably once said something to Bailey such as ‘I know why don’t take the mickey out of his x’ in a pub one night, which doesn’t count as passing on information and was meant pretty innocently. He wouldn’t have foreseen the consequences.
But if what was alleged had been true, it’s worse to ridicule a team-mate in public than to moan about a team-mate in private.
I did. As did others. KP Genius, which was seen by thousands, was the public humiliation of a player, possibly by his team mates. This is obviously much more serious than what may have been said in a private message no one has seen apart from the recipients.
It’s also a recurring theme in the comments below that Selvey article I sent yesterday. Which is why I sent it yesterday: to prove just how many reasonable cricket fans were sceptical about the official line from the start.
Obviously much more serious than a text message which was rumoured to contain tactical information on how to get our captain out?? Yeah I don’t think so.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually believe Kevin’s account of the text content, just can’t see him doing that even if he was in a state at the time. But there was certainly enough doubt and suspicion at the time for them to check it out (to not do so would be negligent) although it sounds like they did so in a truly atrocious manner…
I’m interested where this meme, that the bbm’s contained tactical information, came from. Is it genuine, as Kevin has denied it and there doesn’t seem to be any solid evidence either way?
I can’t trace the exact origin on the tactical meme, but it must be very galling for Pietersen that people continue to believe it and repeat it – even the likes of Mike Atherton. He has always unambiguously denied it – Strauss and the ECB both accepted the denial.
There is no evidence to the contrary. The assumption should be innocence unless proven otherwise.
“It was not documented who had seen the texts or how they had reached the public domain. No journalist, either then or since, said they had seen them at first hand. No South African corroborated the story. So the ECB had nothing to go on bar gossip.”
They were BBM messages rather than texts and the default Blackberry setting is to erase the messages when a chat closes. Therefore it is no different to a telephone call or even a chat in the pub. I don’t think there were any messages to see.
Both Atherton and Agnew have long hinted that the details of this chat were deliberately leaked by the South Africans with sinister motives. There were also hints and innuendos about KP passing tactical information to the opposition. Classical diversionary tactics which simultaneously make the chargesheet against KP more serious.
Agnew claims that someone phoned a South African journalist in the press box to tell him the details. While that may be true, the facts are that no South African media outlet reported a story, and surely if they had such a scoop they would have joyfully done so. In fact the first to report it was the Daily Mail.
Hmm.
Did the Daily Mail have any access to the players outside the official media events? Yes they did actually, because they hired both Dale Steyn and Stuart Broad to write guest columns during the test series. I don’t how these things operate but I imagine a journalist would meet with or phone the player concerned and have a conversation, then the journalist would write the column for him.
I think that the conversation might very well have included the relationship between Strauss and KP. Everyone could see there were obvious problems, and I’m sure the Daily Mail would have done their bit to steer the conversation in that direction. In all innocence and with regrettable naivety, Steyn possibly said something along the lines of “I know KP thinks Strauss is a doos.” (Which more accurately translates to twat, not c*** as the Mail tried to tell us).
KP said that the recipient of the BBM’s was ‘probably’ Morne Morkel, but he was chatting to a lot of people so it could have been someone else. It could well have been Steyn himself but it is not a stretch to imagine that Morkel would show his phone to his bowling partner while he was having a chat.
Significantly, KP has not turned his fire on an opponent who betrayed him to the press with details of a personal conversation. If it happened to me I would be livid, and KP is a confrontational character. That suggests strongly to me that it really was an innocent blunder, and it really is a friend.
In unrelated news, Dale Steyn is a Chelsea supporter who wears the No.8 shirt.
Thanks for this, Iain. You have lasered in to the nub of a crucial point.
Many of us have long wondered how the messages reached the public domain, and it’s worth remembering that they were only ever reported. Just one actual word – doos – was even suggested.
The classical version of the narrative, as you say, is that someone in the SA dressing room rang Neil Manthorpe, the South African cricket writer and broadcaster (who usually does TMS when he’s here) and read some of the texts over the phone.
It’s obviously possible that what was read to him was not exactly the same as what was in the messages.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I’m aware Neil M did not use the story himself; instead it was broken by Lawrence Booth in the Mail. So how did it get from Manthorpe to Booth? Maybe Manthorpe was quite relaxed about the story and told the press box about the call, but only the Mail decided it was worth a punt. Publication had a libel risk involved in the absence of a copy of the texts.
The bottom line is that an awful lot has been assumed about the texts despite no one knowing anything about them. Even today the BBC referred to Pietersen sending “derogatory” texts to Strauss, although he always denied this. Atherton and Vaughan still talk about him sending tactical information, which the ECB acknowledged was not true.
Of course, Pietersen could have cleared it up by saying what he did actually say. I sense from his interviews that he is being evasive, but it’s not impossible he didn’t keep them and doesn’t remember exactly. He might have panicked and deleted them, or as you say, the BlackBerry didn’t retain them. More likely is that he doesn’t want to identify the recipient(s), and revealing any detail about the texts opens up a can of worms from which the names of the players will eventually leak.
A further point is that he could rightly argue that private messages sent on his own phone, which broke no cricketing rules such as interaction with bookies, were his business alone.
Maxie, I also detected that KP was being evasive and when asked to list all the people he was in contact with, significantly omitted the names of Steyn and de Villiers, who were originally named by the Daily Mail but the subject of a specific denial from the SA management. My conclusion is that he doesn’t want to throw a friend, or friends, under the bus for an honest mistake.
I’ve considered the Manthorp angle before, but surely his options were either to publish it for his own prestige or ignore it as unworthy. I think it’s unlikely he would give it to a rival who subsequently won an SJA award for Scoop of the Year, but certainly not impossible. Steyn’s guest column contract is just a more likely route to the Daily Mail. He wrote only one more column after the Headingley test.
“Both Atherton and Agnew have long hinted that the details of this chat were deliberately leaked by the South Africans with sinister motives.”
It’s worth noting that even David Collier, who isn’t usually a friendly witness for Pietersen, suggested months after the whole affair that Pietersen had been a victim of South African provocation. The Saffers angrily denied this, and, having no proof, Collier had to back down to soothe the SACB.
Iain, are you sure about this? I thought it was the South African ‘Mail & Guardian’ newspaper. If not, I stand corrected.
Clive, pretty sure. It was a bit confused, but this is what I could piece together. I didn’t mean that no South African outlet carried the story at all, just that they didn’t break it.
The Headingley match finished on 6th August.
The Daily Mail (Lawrence Booth) was first on 9th August, but without the actual content of the messages, citing it as an issue of fraternisation. He said only that the comments were less than flattering about Strauss and his team-mates.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-2186278/Kevin-Pietersen-sent-text-messages-South-African-rivals-second-Test.html
Manthorp wrote about it on 10th August, in the Mail and Guardian as you say, saying that Pietersen had been less than flattering about the captain and some teammates. Clearly sourced from Booth’s article above, but you get the impression he got additional comment from some South African players.
http://mg.co.za/article/2012-08-10-00-pietersen-a-problem-before-england-match
Dale Steyn wrote his Daily Mail column on 13th August, saying he can’t talk about it. That was his last contribution to the Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-2187940/Kevin-Pietersens-absence-great-Dale-Steyn.html
The Daily Mail published another story on 18th August, not under Lawrence Booth’s name this time, but with the byline shared by Sam Peters and Jonathan Petre. This time it was very much about the content, described as a vile four-letter attack. That’s how the word doos and it’s wrong translation entered the story.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-2190423/Kevin-Pietersen-text-Andrew-Strauss-What-said.html
Somewhere in all the lies, obfuscation and omissions, the full story still lurks . As I said, Lawrence Booth won the SJA Award for Scoop of the Year, and I don’t remember him thanking Neil Manthorp, and he certainly didn’t give it back.
Thanks, Iain and Clive, for all your insight in this.
Certainly, the above narrative of how it unfolded in the Mail tallies with my own memory and copy searches I’ve done since.
I’ve heard the Manthorpe element fairly widely and it seems robust.
It all begs the question – why the obfuscation and cloak and dagger?
And how did something so vaguely reported transmogrify into the eventual narrative? Pretty much anyone you talk to regards it as a fact that he abused Strauss in the texts and relayed tactical information?
Can there ever have been a public figure so traduced – almost career-endingly – on such slender hearsay evidence, obtusely and anonymously presented?
Thanks for the clarification, Iain. Superb research!
Yes, thank you for this information, so hard to get to the truth, this forum provides answers, that are impossible to get from the media. Thanks guys.
In the light of John Etheridge’s claims that the ECB doesn’t leak, that they are in fact notoriously anal about giving information to journalists, Pietersen’s claim in the book that some England cricket people have their favourite journalists on speed dial was interesting.
Mike Selvey used to make similar claims about ECB leaks. I reckon he was, and probably still is, on Andy Flower’s speed dial.
Paul Newman’s piece on Tuesday morning was eerily similar to the dossier which was leaked on Tuesday night.
How?
That is in fact a compliment to Newman himself – his job is to get stories, not keep us happy.
I’ve mentioned this below the line at the Guardian, but I’ll add it here. Did you see that absolutely sweet message from a little boy (who has been selected for Cheshire Under 10s) who wanted to pay for a one-on-one training session with KP, but could not raise the usual £10,000 fee (all of which goes to charity, it should be said)? He offered £1,000 and said he would come down to Surrey. Kevin offered him a free session and even to pay all his travel expenses. One thing that made me smile was that the little boy says: “Also, if you do do a session with me, I promise I won’t brag about it. I will keep it to myself and my mum and dad.”
If Kevin hadn’t revealed it himself, it might have been the first private meeting that KP’s ever had that wasn’t immediately leaked to the press! A 10-year-old with more integrity than Downton and co.
Stuart Broad and I have some common friends.
In September 2012 I was driving with one of these friends who had recently been on a night out with Stuart (ending up at the same nightclub where Ballance had his indiscretion in the summer).
I asked him whether the KP Genius thing had come up in conversation and he said it had. He told me Stuart denied being involved but laughed as he said it and blushed a little. The whole group then laughed about it. Privately, according to my friend, Broad, while he didn’t reveal precise details was tacitly admitting to being involved in KP Genius in some capacity from the beginning.
Clearly something like this isn’t proof of anything (I’m sure it won’t change the mind of anyone who believes Broad’s denials), but it’s an anecdote that appears to back up the KP/Bails-via-Stewart side of the story.
Even before I heard this, I always thought it was inplausible that Bailey would set up an account parodying a colleague of Broad’s whilst in his company and not discuss it. And while I would never take something like this as gospel it certainly further inclined me towards a point of view.