England still have a Pietersen problem

Kevin Pietersen was always going to emerge from the weekend’s Lord’s bicentenary match as a talking point but you could have secured long odds that he would have achieved that outcome without posting so much as a score, a catch, a wicket or a tweet.

Instead, Pietersen – England’s most polarising cricket personality since Geoffrey Boycott – successfully overshadowed the gathering of some of the game’s most gifted and glorified by departing from character and leaving the words and deeds to others.

Unfortunately, the handful of those words offered by his former Test captain Andrew Strauss, who committed the unpardonable sin of engaging in obscene character assassination while carrying a microphone, became a far more voluble talking point than the on-field festivities.

That’s partly because, in the space of an ill-chosen insult, Strauss laid bare the depths of divisions that continue to wrack English cricket and which have been played out in an increasingly public forum since the disaster that was last summer’s five-nil Ashes drubbing in Australia.

Over the past six months, England have dumped their coach (Andy Flower) and most successful contemporary batsman (Pietersen), as well as their most prolific Test run-scorer of all time (batting coach Graham Gooch).

They still remain winless in the Test arena after succumbing to the lowly-ranked Sri Lanka in their two-match series.

And prior to that they suffered the ignominy of losing to Holland – a nation about as familiar with cricket as they are with mountains – at the ICC World T20 tournament in Bangladesh.

What’s more, the appointment of Peter Moores as Flower’s replacement ahead of England’s then limited-overs coach Ashley Giles has led to Giles vacating his role as coach and national selector.

And the public criticism of England captain Alastair Cook – most pointedly from outspoken champions of Pietersen’s lost cause – has become so unrelenting that Cook himself has called for something to be done about it.

But the fact that Strauss, widely regarded as a measured, sensible man who has taken great care not to allow his historic animosities with Pietersen to colour his commentary even after their bitter falling out in 2012, inadvertently let slip his true feelings also underscores the reasons why Pietersen had to go.

Quick Single: Strauss caught slagging KP off

Clearly, he has burned so many bridges within the game in his adopted home that it was ultimately deemed better to be without his game-changing batting skills in the post-Ashes rebuild than to indulge his toxic influence on the dressing room.

And, as now confirmed, the commentary box.

Strauss, who composed and delivered his own apology on air later in the day, has been told by his employers Sky Sports – who also posted an apology on social media – that his lapse would not cost him his job.

But there can be no question that Pietersen’s sizeable shadow will continue to loom over England’s coming five-Test series against India which begins this week, especially if the home team’s top-order batting again shows frailties.

As former England allrounder Derek Pringle wrote in The Telegraph newspaper in the UK yesterday: “For those who felt the England management were right to dismiss Pietersen, Strauss’s crude sound bite is evidence as to why the former is no longer playing for England, and far more concise than the many statements released by the England and Wales Cricket Board”.

“Strauss’s words, ill-chosen and ill-judged as they were, nevertheless come from one of the most reasonable men to have played cricket.

“For those seeking conspiracies for his (Pietersen’s) departure, or at the very least a tipping point, there is no smoking gun, just words and actions perceived by the ECB to be undermining the team.

“As one insider said after (the tour to) Australia: ‘Kevin was just being Kevin but we’d all had enough’.

“The implication was that tolerance of difficult players subsides with defeat. England victories are the only thing that will lay this messy affair to rest.”

For his part, Pietersen – and certainly his mouthpieces, one of whom has publicly referred to Cook as “a repulsive little weasel” – continues to accept his removal from the England side with all the good grace of an overthrown regent forced into exile.

Since being reduced to a limited-overs county player and travelling T20 bat-for-hire, Pietersen has used his newspaper column to offer some constructive advice on how England can improve as well as thinly-disguised destructive assessments as to why they are in this current predicament.

He also raised eyebrows when he attended one of the recent Tests against Sri Lanka in the company of the author of the ‘weasel’ epithet, outspoken broadcaster and compulsive cricket tweeter Piers Morgan.

Perhaps most brazenly, Pietersen took the opportunity of an all-star media conference leading into the Lord’s game to remind long-suffering England fans that he remained available for a recall and had not – at age 34 – abandoned his belief that it might happen.

“I’d love to play for England again – I’ve still got hope,” he told journalists gathered in the famous Long Room at Lord’s, almost taunting the officials, coaches and former team-mates who called time on his divisive influence and engineered his axing.

“I’ve got a phone in my pocket. I’ve got a pretty good resumé.

“If things change one day, I’ll gladly accept the opportunity, because I love playing for England.

“If I didn’t love it, I’d have retired.

“But I haven’t retired.”