The turtle tank revisited

turtle-in-tank

Over the last twenty four hours this blog has found itself at the eye of a Twitter storm.

It began yesterday when Piers Morgan reTweeted a link to an article by Tregaskis we published in May – Inside The Turtle Tank.

It examines the management culture of the ECB, and how its failings in regard to Kevin Pietersen led to his estrangement and ultimate sacking from the team.

Jonathan Agnew took fierce exception to the article, describing it as “embarrassing garbage”, and a “hatchet job” on Andy Flower, even though Flower is by no means the principal subject of the piece.

Agnew believes it is inaccurate to say that “Flower comes across as a manager long on memory and short on forgiveness”. Why? Because of this, which he first reported on Friday and re-emphasised today:

In the post, Tregaskis does not actually discuss the brokering or authorship of the “reintegration”.

Agnew’s new line about Flower is not relevant to Tregaskis’s piece. And it only begs more questions. Who told Agnew that Flower was Pietersen’s saviour, and what did they say? What are the sources? He has not provided much detail.

Since then, Agnew and Morgan have rowed about us on Twitter. Have a look at their timelines and what others have said. In essence, Agnew argues that Morgan should have checked the facts in our piece before reTweeting the link.

Morgan responded with Tweets such as this:

Then there was this:

I’m not sure what facts Morgan was supposed to check before giving our link a plug. Only Andy Flower himself knows his motives and rationale. Was Morgan meant to speak to Flower directly? Has Agnew? And why is defending Flower’s reputation so important to him?

Here is some other reaction:

https://twitter.com/Pam_nAshes/status/508744839819968512

Both Tregaskis and I, separately, have suggested on this site that Flower sought revenge for Pietersen’s role in the sacking of Peter Moores in January 2009. It’s completely obvious that we do not present this as fact, but an interpretation of the evidence in the public domain. Only Flower himself  – a public figure whose actions invite scrutiny – knows what went through his mind. And he hasn’t spoken.

The ECB have perpetuated a climate of silence and secrecy. Hugh Morris refused to answer questions on Pietersen’s sacking as captain. They then either suggested or agreed to a confidentiality agreement about his sacking as a player. The management have given very few interviews since February, and in the ones they have done, said little.

We ourselves have twice approached the ECB for an interview with Giles Clarke. They were perfectly entitled to decline, as they did, but if they don’t want to engage, they cannot complain when people who care about English cricket attempt to pick through the evidence to work out what happened. If we reach the wrong conclusions – well why don’t they set the record straight, openly and honestly?

Our game is in schism. Grown men are knocking lumps out of each other on Twitter. When the ECB decided to sack their most famous player without explaining why, they triggered a civil war which shows no signs of impending armistice. It has never been like this before. It may never be normal again.

As for the original article, you can read it again here. To my mind it’s a beautifully written, exhaustively argued and uniquely insightful analysis of what went wrong, and who’s to blame. But judge for yourselves.

 

46 comments

  • Spot on, apart from the first couple of words in this bit:
    Grown men are knocking lumps out of each other on Twitter

  • I just want to say keep up the good work everyone who contributes to this blog. The original article was indeed beautifully written, and I agree with every single word within it.

    As for Mr Waitrose, he has been ridiculously sensitive these last six months, so I wouldn’t worry too much about what he has to say. My bet is he is still aggrieved after KP branded him a “fool” a few months back!

  • Thanks for writing this Maxie, in light of what’s been said on twitter the last day or two, this needed summing up.

    The one quibble I have with Agnew’s stance on this is his basically telling Tregaskis that an article of opinion dating back to May needed to be re-written in light of new evidence he presented to Tregaskis this weekend. Pretty sure he doesn’t apply the same rules to his own article archive on the BBC website (indeed, the BBC may strictly preclude such things). It’s a very odd stance for a BBC journalist (albeit freelance) to take. I don’t agree with that at all. Nor should he disparage Tregaskis on the basis of a small twitter following. A quick delve on here & through his twitter feed would have revealed a passionate, highly cogent, writer to Agnew. Possibly the best blogger out there – his guest appearances here, CiF & elsewhere are required reading. Everytime. I hope this doesn’t put him off. I tip my hat to him. He articulates many of my thoughts far better than I ever will.

    I like J Agnew – he is a warm personable guy, he engages on twitter despite a lot of rage & nonsense in his direction from all over the globe. He was very gracious to Dmitri Old earlier in the year, as well as in his interview on here. I disagree with many of his thoughts in the last year or so, and it has put me off listening to TMS this year, which is a real shame. If he wasn’t Chief Cricket Correspondent for the BBC, but say a writer for one of the papers, I would have far less issue with him. But I don’t think he has acted on behalf of many of his listeners in pursuing the ECB thoroughly this year. There are many questions he of all people should be asking in his role as an impartial, publicly-funded correspondent. Why has he at least not held the ECB to task at least for the “outside cricket” comment? I am still insulted by that even now.

    I accept that he quite probably doesn’t agree with the interpretation I & many others have about the ECB’s behaviour post-Ashes, and that he also receives a lot of messages from people who do not accept that interpretation (indeed, his #1 cheerleader Pam Nash is quoted above), but that doesn’t mean those questions cannot be asked. It gives the impression of a lack of impartiality, and that isn’t good from his position at all.

    • I asked Pam BTL why she hated KP so much as I was really puzzled by it. Perhaps she was his next door neighbour or knew him well? I dislike certain sportsmen and women but I really do not get vitriolic about them so I wondered. She replied that it was textgate that did it for her and his arrogance in general. She felt he was a divisive influence and that was that. I thanked her for her reply as she had taken the trouble to do so but I still find it difficult to understand.

      As for Mr Agnew, he really needs to break the ECB/Waitrose shackles and be a tad more independent. He makes me feel sympathetic and in agreement with Piers Morgan and that takes some doing

    • Got a piece on this in the works, as you might tell. Let me say this about Agnew. I was out of line one night. On reviewing the information with a non-alcohol based head I saw I was a little out of line, and admitted it. I received some pretty awful personal abuse from his twitter followers, which I’m sure he would disown, just as I disown the abuse he might get. By abuse, I don’t mean criticism. I mean calling him obsequious when you shouldn’t…. But apologies and admitting you are wrong aren’t a sign of weakness.

      He made peace. We have a truce. I don’t follow him on Twitter because the post he blocked me over was the one where I said I was fed up with English cricket and could walk away, yet I can read him if I choose, which I do. That night I’d had a good evening until then… But fair play to him for the peacemakin, and I’ve been more careful in writing about him. I think he was out of line for the two-fingers nonsense after Cook’s 95, but then again, I’m hardly in a place to get morally outraged at getting a bit of stick back!

      But this went way too far, and I’m disappointed with Agnew. No-one is aiming darts at him so he should calm the hell down. It was an interesting nugget, as he called it, put our way, but we shouldn’t be feeding off nuggets. Something not subject to the confidentiality agreement is put out there two years after the event. Excuse me if this isn’t the most earth shattering piece of information ever. But it was interesting. I said so. Even had a joke with him about it on Saturday.

      This schism needs to heal, but it won’t while one side is being treated like nonsense. If the refuseniks won’t be heard, we have to shout louder, and shout more effectively. T is one of the best, if not the best, at it. Schisms need to be healed through mutual trust and meeting somewhere. Maxie and James are as good conduits as there are for that.

  • Pam Nash prostitutes herself all over the newspapers – will the real Pam Nash stand up please?

    • as I said above Pam did reply to a query of mine but is it Jonathan Agnew in disguise? Or Andrew Strauss??

    • Indeed. I’ve had some pretty offensive things said to me by Pam Nash. Haven’t seen her on DT lately. Might be because her offensive tone lead to her being “mauled” by England supporters. I even tried to say I was sorry to her for upsetting her so much. I am an honest person and what you see is what you get. However she called me a liar and that was that. She is a sad lady.

  • Well I wouldn’t take much notice of Pam Nash. She was on Dmitri’s site attacking me because I called the so called fans who booed KP at the 20/20 finals day unthinking knuckle draggers Seeing as she took such umbrage to this I can only assume therefore she supports whole heartily the booing of England’s greatest run getter in all cricket. What a delightful fan of the England team.

    But it did reveal how obnoxious and hypocritical these people are. They hide behind their so called polite speech while munching bakery’s full of cake. But they are the ones who who have cheered on the Agnew’s and the Newman’s and the Pringle’s as they have poured oil onto the fire, though at the time claiming the ECB doesn’t leak.

    And while they have been pleading for everyone to be nice to each other. They were booing KP or defending the booing of KP. Charming people.

    3 guesses which BBC cricket commentator said this after the Test series

    “Let’s just hope that it really is the end of a divisive summer and that everyone can now get behind the team and accept that England have moved on in a new direction.”

    They thought they had won. That Cooks place was now unchallengeable. And that the ECB line on KP was written in stone. They were wrong, just as they have been wrong about most things.

    • Because I allowed your comment Pam decided she wasn’t welcome on my blog. I have to say if she feels like that, it is up to her. Like Pam, we are entitled to opinions. She’s welcome to air them on my blog, any time. But people will react!

      • Thanks for clearing that up Dmitri. So in effect she wanted my opinion censored or she would storm off.

        I have to say this is typical of the way they carry on. They like to dish it out as they did to KP on finals day. But they start clutching their pearls when the boot is on the other foot. They have had the vast majority of the media in their pockets. Hence why they call us a tiny minority and outside cricket. But according to one journalist last week the overwhelming response on his papers pieces was anti ECB and anti Cook.

        Maybe this why they are getting so angry. They are losing the argument.

          • She never asked me to censor the post, but the tone made her feel unwelcome. I have censored very little in my time on there – once had a post on another blog accusing a very famous sportsperson of having taken performance enhancing drugs all her career which I safely deleted – and unless it gets too political or vicious I won’t.

  • If some of the too cosy media are upset by the contents of your blog, you are doing your job. Keep at ’em.

  • Trying to take a balanced view as neither a lover of the ECB’s style or a believer that KP is either the messiah or a completely innocent angel what I find immensely irritating is that when Jonathan Agnew or others are not slating the ECB or Alistair Cook or any aspect of the England management, they’re labelled as ‘stooges’ or part of the ‘cult’ or other equally damning accusations.

    Has it ever occurred that they just have a different opinion. Maybe Jonathan Agnew, who I would suggest knows a lot more about the workings of the ECB and the English cricket team than most of us, has more of a balanced view.

    Just because Jonathan Agnew is not taking the ECB to task on something that you feel strongly about (‘outside cricket’), does that make him a bad journalist? I think the ‘outside cricket’ has been blown out of all proportion by those who are determined to be outraged. I’m an avid cricket supporter since the late 70s, but am not offended by being labelled outside cricket, because I’m not involved in anything to do with the running of the game.

    • Hamish, I agree with you.

      Jonathan Agnew is quite entitled to his opinion.

      It’s also good to have a really broad range of opinions.

      If he disagree with what is, to all in intents and purposes, a lengthy but well written polemic, by doing so on a public forum like twitter, he should probably engage and rebutt the points he does vehemently disagree.

      If he can’t be bothered to do so, which again, I’d completely and utterly understand why he wouldn’t be bothered, then why bother laying into the article in twitter on the first place.

      My main issue has always been the lack of questioning of the party line.

    • Hi Hamish. I agree with much of what you say. I’m like you in that I do not like the ECB’s style, but neither am I pro-Pietersen (I think there were valid cricketing reasons to drop him). I don’t particularly like it when journalists get abuse. Jonathan Agnew has been a friend of this blog, he’s a journalist I love listening to on TMS, and I respect his knowledge of cricket (obviously). But in this particular case I feel that he’s wrong to attack Tregaskis, and wrong to attack us for publishing it.

      We try to be a broad church here at TFT (although the majority of our readers have become anti-establishment in recent times), we have also published articles that praise Flower etc in the past. Furthermore, Maxie and myself often disagree. We just call it as we see it, and we’ll publish any article we feel is well written and engaging, whatever it’s position (and whether we agree with it personally or not). We won’t publish articles that are abusive, slanderous, or offensive of course, but Tregaskis’ piece was nowhere near this line.

      • Surely James the article that Tresgaskis wrote was in light of what was known them and might I say what the Journos, close to the ECB, and the ECB said said was true at the time. I do not see that in the light of a new little nugget invalidates what was said in the past. We may have been told in school, as I was, from a written book: Kind Henry was a good king and ruled England well. I know that isn’t all the story and of course so much has been written now that we all know that wasn’t right. At the time however it was seen as the truth. Why should you and Maxie and Tregaskis remove and/or change it. Will the ECB or any of the journos do that in the light of new evidence? I think not. Moreover, this incident has occurred because Piers Morgan picked it up and ran with it That was like a red rag to a bull. If PM hadn’t seen it and advertised it then it would have still been a piece in the library.

        Now the other point in all this is: how do we know what the ECB is saying is true? Why is it that when the ECB speaks everything is true and must be seen as such, but everyone else is a liar, etc etc? Aggers might know a lot but he, like everyone else, is being dripped ECB “nuggets” all of the time. I am not accusing Aggers of lying but has the ECB lied to him? What of the nugget that John Etheridge was given by a member of the ECB? KP gave back all his trophies and they were in the ECB office? That wasn’t true and the ECB was found out. No name has been given up yet. That was hidden away very carefully. When one examines what the ECB has said in one breath and then almost the opposite in the other, how can one trust what the ECB says?

        • Annie,
          And that last thought – ” how can one trust what the ECB says?” – sums up the sadness and futility of this whole sorry saga.
          The ECB could issue a point by point refutation of everything that KP is doubtless about to say in his book. They could release “the dossier”. They could do, in short, exactly what most people on here want them to do – be 100% transparent on what happened and when. And it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference, for precisely the reason you mention.
          Those in the anti-ECB camp don’t trust the ECB or the journos, so they have a perfect retort to anything that comes out in the meantime – “well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?” Despite Maxie’s call for “an explanation”, the truth is that there is no explanation that will satisfy the anti’s. Only Cook, Moores, Downton and Clarke’s heads on platters would do that. Minds are made up on both sides and there’s probably no changing them.
          Realistically – and I think tragically for English cricket – I think the only way any kind of catharsis takes place is if we get roundly smashed in the Ashes, forcing Cook, Moores and (possibly) Downton to resign. As a fan of English cricket I will be watching and hoping that doesn’t happen – but what a wretched situation we find ourselves in.

  • This is what happens when you create a vacuum of information the way Downton and the ECB have. Opinions come rushing in to fill the void. Personally I love to hear the opinions of others. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them but I enjoy them nonetheless. My personal stance is that when Kevin has been treated like a star he has thoroughly enjoyed the experience. So much so that when he has not been held in higher esteem than others it sticks in his craw. Each time this happens he burns his bridges and moves on, always insisting that it is somebody else’s fault that he finds himself hard done to again. He finds himself now in the last five years of his career and is running out of bridges to burn. The ECB business has undoubtedly affected his form, this was obvious watching him in the last IPL where he was clearly phoning it in. He had a terrible tournament by his standards and will be worrying now that his continued bad form in the T20 blast will result in a much lower price in next years auction. I doubt that Delhi will retain him and he certainly won’t be captain anywhere soon. It seems that even his ‘mentor’ Graham Ford has decided he doesn’t justify selection at Surrey now. It is certainly a lonely road he is running down and it could have been very different. I do believe the ECB have treated him badly but I don’t think he has done himself any favours with them. Should he be treated differently to others? Maybe in another sport he would have been but in cricket you are either in the 1% that change games and become millionaires many times over, or you are a journeyman who wonders how he will pay his mortgage when the county cheques dry up. Kevin is a 1 percenter and can feel it slipping away. Being realistic, without international cricket his sponsors won’t pony up the big money he’s used to. The cheques are going to get smaller from here onwards and he is a young man with a lot of life ahead of him. Whether he made his bed, or whether it was made for him, he is running out of options now. I have loved watching him play, many have said he is a player of great innings rather than a great player and I tend to agree with that assessment. No matter how loudly I object it is not going to bring him back. I sorely wish it would, at least for limited overs cricket anyway. There is an argument that if Cook were to focus on the test game there would be room for Kevin to continue to play white ball cricket without the two having to ever share a dressing room. I think this is the answer and I don’t really know why nobody has suggested it.

  • I wound also like to echo my co-editor’s comments. I don’t agree with everything in Tregaskis’s piece but I believe it’s well written and honest. It’s obviously an opinion piece – so it’s not trying to be impartial reporting – so accusations of bias, an agenda etc are irrelevant.

    As a published historian, I know that scholarly literature on past events is merely a collection of personal interpretations based on the evidence available (which is frequently incomplete). Different equally qualified and distinguished observers can reach different conclusions after looking at the very same evidence. There is no such thing as 100% objective truth. Everyone interprets events according to their personal prejudices and experiences.

    As a result, Tregaskis was entitled to write what he wrote. Not everyone will agree, but they’re not required to. He’s not submitting forensic evidence to a court, he’s speculating, making personal judgements and expressing himself as someone who cares deeply about English cricket. His piece is, therefore, like the majority of articles written by most journalists. If a small portion of what he wrote ultimately proves to be inaccurate – because new evidence has come to light in the four months since he wrote it – it will be no different to any history book ever written. What’s more he expresses himself thoughtfully without a hint of abuse. I’m convinced many of the people criticising this article on twitter haven’t read it properly. The response by some has been totally disproportionate.

    • Agnew is usually totally devoid of opinions. He just passes on the press releases. He makes Vic Marks seem dangerously radical. So for him to come out, all guns blazing, dismissing a very cogently argued think-piece as “garbage” on the evidence of some piece of unattributed hearsay (by no means a provable fact) is very odd. Perhaps he had been drinking. He certainly gives no signs of having read the piece. Then all the abuse of Piers Morgan for not checking facts. Then comical Pammy declares the piece libellous. Another person who passes opinion without reading or understanding the piece. Very odd. What next? Perhaps a former cricketer will call someone the “c” word on commentary. It makes me wonder if a disinformation campaign is starting, to discredit KP’s book and viewpoint in advance of publication – a snowstorm of irrelevant social media drivel.

  • Enough of Agnew, this is all diverting attention from poor, misunderstood, abused Kevin who only ever had England’s best interests at heart. And the cruellest thing you can do to Kevin – and his celeb cheerleaders for that matter – is to take attention away from them.

  • Thanks for all your comments and kind words. It’s been an interesting experience, having this blog a minor centre of attention for a few minutes this morning!

    These are the latest thoughts from PM and JA:

    https://twitter.com/Aggerscricket/status/508983348233261057

    I still don’t know what facts Jonathan A believes are wrong in the piece, and what facts he has to rebut them.

    I don’t accept that an anonymous word on the sly counts as a fact.

    • The point I keep raising. How do we know anything is true or false. The only reason Aggers came out guns a-blazing was because Morgan got hold of it. Otherwise nothing would have been said. Well that is what I think.

  • I have just re read the piece again and, I am even more mystified as to why Agnew has flown off the handle about it. Goodness knows why anyone thinks they have to start getting M’learned friends involved.

    Why does a BBC journalist think it is his job to go into bat for an ex England coach? A position the said journalist is supposed to be covering openly?

    I can only assume he does not like the argument, and the conclusion the piece makes. We all ready know that. It is my opinion this is why the defence of Cook has been so hysterical. Because it is not really Cook they are defending. He is just a symbol of the their pro ECB position.

    If your contention is that KP was a bastard, completely unmanageable, disruptive, and a traitor to the England team that is fine. But even if all these things were true. It doesn’t mean A Cook is a good captain. It does not mean he is untouchable. It does not mean he is the greatest living Englishmen. And he should captain England’s ODI side. Yet that is the yarn they have been spinning all summer.

    • I’d imagine the lines

      “His tormentors have been aided by a compliant, embedded press, including a cabal of former low-to-mid ranking test bowlers, drunk on their proximity to power and privilege. These have lickspittled and polished the ECB’s tampered narrative and undermined the character of the South-African-born Pietersen, as they prefer to call him.”

      Might have understandably have been partially responsible for Jonathan Agnew’s response. In that sense I can understand that, calling into question as it does his professional integrity, not by name but by insinuation. Given what’s gone the other way (outside cricket, know nothings, key board warriors, acolytes etc), it could have been worse perhaps.

      Other than that, the piece is what it is, once man’s take on the ECB’s management, or lack thereof, of talented but difficult individuals using Kevin Pietersen as a case study. Not a lot to take offence at.

      • That’s not something he mentioned. Selvey and Pringle also fit that description – ie of middle to low ranking test bowlers.

      • But he doesn’t actually mention Agnew by name.

        As Maxie says there are quite a few “former low-to-mid ranking test bowlers, drunk on their proximity to power and privilege. ”

        I can think of 4 straight off the bat. Perhaps the truth hit a nerve.

    • To be fair to Aggers, he did question Cook’s role as ODI captain recently. I honestly think he tries to be impartial, and his interview style is to be polite to the subject in the hope he/she feels comfy, opens up and therefore reveals more info than they might do if antagonised (all of which is fine), but I do think he’s wrong to have a go over this Tregaskis piece.

      • James I take your point. And Aggers usually does come across as a nice guy trying to fair. I don’t think he likes confrontation. Which is why he is probably shocked and upset by what has happened this year.

        But, and it is a big but…….he and the others do not seem to understand how biased they have been on this issue. Also, one is reminded of the Andrew Strauss affair. Strauss too is polite, well turned out, nice voice, establishment through and through. And thanks to Sky Australia we now know that is not quite the case.

    • Who is the ‘they’ that you are referring to from the third para onwards? Some tight-knit group of conspiracists bound together in a blood oath? Or the great majority of the cricketing public in the UK who know that Flower earned massive respect from all the people who matter in cricket for his achievements both as a player and a coach.

      • Tim you are right . Flower was a first class England coach and achieved an awful lot. The purpose of this blog is not to criticise Flower. We’ve written plenty of positive things about him over the years. We just think that his shelf life as a coach had expired after the Ashes whitewash (as it did with Duncan Fletcher) and it was time for a change. Reappointing his predecessor wasn’t exactly the change we had in mind! Many are also upset over the handling of KP’s sacking, whether we like him personally or not. It was all handled badly and many cricket fans felt insulted that the ECB gave no specific reasons for his dismissal, and patronised those of us who demanded more information and transparency.

        • Sorry James but I think Flower has a lot to answer for. I’m not convinced he should take all the credit for England’s early success under him. We had some very ,very good players at the height of their powers and the right age.

          Players take catches, score runs, and take wickets, not coaches. Great sides have great players. I would argue as time went on it was his ever increasing smothering of players and theories that caused things to go downward.

          And the whole KP thing comes back to the issue of The IPL. Flower refused point black to find a solution that would accommodate the one and only player in the England team who was wanted by the IPL for big bucks.

  • I don’t know Aggers and he is entitled to his opinion but in his capacity at the BBC he should be representing the people who pay the licence fee. He should be asking probing questions because the public want to be informed. His opinion should not count during any interviews with either players or ECB. His (and others) unwillingness to ask the difficult questions show a certain contempt for the paying public, it is this kind of journalism that raises questions about the impartiality of BBC and will cost them dearly in the long run.

  • All of this could have been solved of the ECB had handled the sacking properly and explained their reasons at the time. Since then we have been drip fed information about what KP had done whilst Piers Morgan has responded with KP’s side of the story ( presumably). As a result, we have been witnessing a civil war in English cricket which isn’t doing anyone any favours. Fair play to TFT for causing such a stir!

    • “All of this could have been solved if the ECB had handled the sacking properly and explained their reasons at the time.”

      Yes. And even more so, if there’d been a proper review into what went wrong in Australia, the reasons for the team’s appalling performance, the management of players’ health and why the effects of back-to-back Tests hadn’t been better prepared for. With key findings reported publicly.

      I don’t know how many times it has to be said that supporters’ disaffection with England cricket over the last months is not all about Kevin Pietersen.

      • I couldn’t agree more Zephirine. It is not, as you say, all about Pietersen! Blaming KP for everything that went wrong in Australia was just a smokescreen for the failings of others. How simplistic of the ECB et al to blame one person for the complete collapse of morale and utterly humiliation of a the whole team. I didn’t believe it then and I do not believe it now. It is just the same in government really. The top people make mistakes and then sack their underlings and blame them for all the faults. Deflect the failure of the ECB onto one player? Why do folk swallow that line. Utterly ludicrous and doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. There absolutely no way TFT and Tregaskis should change the original article. That would actually mean that the ECB were telling the truth that Cook called for KP to be back in the team and of course the truth now that it was Flower? So what is the TRUTH? Aggers says Flower was the prime mover? Has anyone asked him why the ECB kept saying that it was Cook? Has Aggers himself asked the ECB that question? I expect the answer to be “No”. Again we must take the word of the ECB, et al, as TRUTH. Sorry if I sound oh so cynical, but I don’t believe a word they say anymore. Too many lies have been told already. One cannot trust them further than one can throw them.

  • Piers is playing his pantomime villain role perfectly, knowing how to stir things and pressing the right buttons to generate some pompous hrumphing from Aggers. What staggers me is that Aggers chose to make a minor incident into an entertaining waste of 24 hours on Twitter.

    As for the accusations that Flowers has been smeared, the original blog post was passionate, yet measured, erudite and used all the information in the public domain at the time.

    Given the Saint and Greavsie style ‘banter’ that passes for analysis between Aggers and our Geoffrey it was great to read an article that did attempt to apply a more thoughtful review of the state of leadership/management of English cricket, and did it pretty well.

    I’m all for standing up to bullies and can see to a degree what Aggers is trying to do, as Flower is a quiet person by nature, but there’s a lack of consistency from Aggers in his three wise monkeys approach to Strauss’ use of the ‘C’ word on national television when describing a former England captain.

    Agnews comments also indicate a contempt for those of us who merely play cricket at park/club level. We have all had to deal with divas, nutters, egomaniacs etc. and the captain usually worked out a way of managing he problem, without having to show players the exit door.

  • The discussion that has been generated here could have equally applied to either how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin, or the Schleswig-Holstein Question of 19th Century Infamy.
    I still like Aggers a lot, when Giles Clarke et all were busy sucking up to “Sir” Allen Stanford’s Helicopter and subsequent circus, Aggers went on to Panorama to discuss his doubts and severe worries about the Bona Fides of the whole thing. When I tweeted him to praise him on presenting Radio 4’s Archive Hour programme about the South Africa Rebel Tour of 1981-1982 he tweeted back to say thanks but it was all the Producers’ Work.

  • Sorry, I hadn’t finished the Comment above. I was going to say but…I think Aggers by the way he has responded to people who don’t follow totally the Giles Clarke dictat, shows himself to be ever so slightly sensitive to criticism. There is a touch of the Tony Blairs’ in telling us to move on, nothing to see here! Still it is entertaining to watch him and Piers react like two overgrown kindergarten brats who are each going to tell mummy of the other…reminds me of a Smith And Jones sketch on the same lines!!!

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

copywriter copywriting