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It is fascinating to watch from afar the turmoil and anguish currently suffusing English cricket over the curious question of Kevin Pietersen.
To see the proud, ancient cricketing nation torn apart by the controversy arouses powerful emotions in the observer’s breast, emotions that for this Australian cricket lover can be best summed up as: Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
But the joy of seeing English cricket in distress aside, the Pietersen affair does raise serious questions about the balance a team must strike between individual ability and collective unity.
That KP is enormously talented is not in question: in fact I can probably pay him no greater compliment than to say that in all my years of watching cricket, there’s not been a single batsman whose dismissal brought me greater pleasure. Australian teams have been tormented by mighty batsmen in that time, from Laxman to Lara, but seeing Pietersen trudge off brought an almost sacred euphoria to bear upon the mood, as if the light of God were shining on us in that moment of beauty.
However, the fact seeing him get out has always been so enjoyable probably hints at the problem: Pietersen is kind of…I’m not sure there’s a delicate way to put it on a family website such as this. Let’s just say that if he were a character in The Karate Kid, he’d sweep the leg without even being told to. There are entire musical genres based entirely on people who had to go to high school with people like Kevin Pietersen. He’s the kind of guy who reads Shane Warne’s Twitter feed and still wants to hang out with him.
So you can see why there might be some who balk at the idea of playing cricket alongside him. Mind you, England spent a decade not being all that fussed about it, which suggests one of two things: either Pietersen, once you get to know him, is a kind, generous, loveable, Hugh Jackman-ish sort of chap; or professional sports teams don’t care much how big a tosser you are as long as your numbers look good.
The evidence for the latter proposition is fairly strong – for example, Paul Gallen. And it’s not as if KP would’ve been the only tool in the box – just the biggest, with the stupidest hair. Anyone who wants to play cricket for their country has to put up with close proximity to men who, outside the flannelled realm, they wouldn’t swerve to miss. But our Kevin seems to have pushed things just that little bit further, to the point where his teammates were swerving at him.
The loss in the last Ashes series cannot have helped. Pietersen was, of course, his team’s highest runscorer in that series. But in a summer of horrific collapses triggered by Australia’s most terrifying moustache, his figures still weren’t all that imposing. Moreover, there was a sense that while the rest of the batting order were bunnies frozen in headlights, Pietersen was the bunny who escaped the headlights but got run over later that night after falling asleep in a driveway: others were overwhelmed, but KP built his own destruction out of carelessness and arrogance.
Still, it would seem a team is better served by a man who gets out for fifty attempting the impossible or moronic, than by one who gets out for five attempting to find his mum. But as things tend to be when there’s an opinion column to be written, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
What it came down to is trust. New cricket director Andrew Strauss just cannot trust Pietersen not to do something counterproductive, like calling Strauss a prick. As a seasoned campaigner, Strauss knows how damaging to morale it can be when people call him a prick: his own morale always plummets when that happens. And England has a consistent record of winning more Tests when nobody in the team is calling Andrew Strauss a prick. The 1956 Ashes is a good example of this.
But surely a compromise can be reached? Maybe Strauss and Pietersen could strike a deal where Pietersen gets to text slurs about Strauss to South Africans once a week, if Strauss gets to distribute unflattering nude drawings of Pietersen to the entire XI before every game. Or maybe Pietersen gets to kick Strauss in the crotch on his birthday, but for every hundred runs Pietersen scores Strauss gets to stick a needle into his skull.
I’ll let them figure out the details, but there has to be some way to get this gentle, obnoxious soul back where he belongs: on the international stage.
But on the other hand, screw him.