At least Eoin Morgan put his head on the block. The main powers have said nothing for a while….
How wonderful!
The irony, given tomorrow’s anniversary, is complete.
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Being Outside Cricket 
Fanboy.
Puppet of Piers Morgan.
Errrrr….
Acolyte.
Ummmmm…
Agenda.
*scratches head for a bit*
Oh yeah:
NOT A REAL FAN.
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This looks as if it is a pre-meditated interview to kill any recall talk before it gets out of hand. I think it is a sensible approach from a media and team strategy. The team needs to prepare for the world cup with as few distractions as possible. Shoot the elephant before it enters the room.
Morgan has to show faith in the team he has. Plus who are you going to drop to get him in the team? If it is a cricketing decision that is fine. KP’s fielding isn’t great Jason Roy would probably be the player to make way and his partnership with Hales is key to ODI and T20 cricket now and for the next few years.
Clearly it isn’t just a cricketing decision and clearly it isn’t Morgan’s decision to make, but and least it is done.
Separately I would like to see Luke Wright getting a place in the t20 squad. he has earned it.
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It’s not a cricketing decision. And hasn’t been for 2 years. They are just too cowardly to admit it,
And who is going to drop out to make way for Luke Wright if as you say there is no room for KP?
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Mark/Simon et al…
Never saw this earlier this morning – watched the Superbowl last night so went to bed late, got up late. Also, as it was on one of TLG’s posts, I don’t get the same notifications as I do if it is a reply to one of mine. No problem.
Hussain did not think to follow up the last Morgan point with the question “Why?”. Really?
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I know it isn’t a cricketing decision – I just wanted to ask what if it was a cricketing decision.
As for Wright – I said a call up to the squad, rather than as a member of the first choice XI.
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Philip,
I didn’t, for one millisecond, believe they’d pick KP. It isn’t an elephant in the room, to be ignored at all costs, it is a millstone around their necks and they cannot got shot of it. They absolutely cannot. This media strategy is fatally flawed and plays to who? Those who don’t want him back in case their beloved England superfans get super upset? Well, they seem to have just enough rage to keep them going when there’s been no live prospect of him playing, so this is just another affirmation from their chaps.
You’ve read the blog long enough to know that this debate has two main tenets. 1. Why was he sacked? We have a right, in my view, to know. You are past unlawful dismissal now… and 2. Do England select on matters other than merit so that the next “maverick” is in jeopardy too?
Seriously, picking a World T20 squad on merit, with the evidence at your disposal and KP is in. It’s not really debatable. Vince or KP? Roy or KP? On the evidence available.
You can’t connect by intimation and media strategy. You connect by being straight. This isn’t Morgan’s call. He just said the message is coming from him.
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I read ‘That’s from me’ as meaning ‘That’s all I’m telling you’. Not ‘That’s my decision’. Even though that’s not what Nasser meant with the question.
We know a) Morgan’s pretty tough, b) he doesn’t play the political games any more than he has to, and c) he gets on with KP and has defended him in the past. So I don’t take this as him finally joining the bosses. It’s a pragmatic statement of the situation.
Having said that, if I were in Morgan’s shoes now I’m not sure that I’d want Pietersen back at this stage. It is really too late now, he’s too big a beast, the side is gelling well and they have to believe they can win the WC on their own. Even though we know what he’d bring and I completely believe that Pietersen would be utterly professional and want to help the side in every way he could, he’d arrive with a ton of luggage of different kinds, good as well as bad.
And they’ve got one genius. Some comments for the Irony Department here:
He’s the easiest person to handle because he’s his own biggest critic and it’s great to play with someone who’s genuinely world-class.
He’s actually an introvert but he is so extrovert in the way he plays that he’s great for the changing room. He takes a huge amount of responsibility on his shoulders and it’s our job to let him spread his wings and just play.
I don’t suppose for a moment that the irony was lost on Morgan when he made those remarks about Buttler. Any more than he was unaware of what he was saying about the previous coaching regime with We have very few meetings now and some of the information we’ve used in the past has clouded judgment.
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As I wrote in one of the threads below when I read that exchange.
Don’t believe a word of it, it’s a shame Strauss and the ECBs ego have to hide behind Morgan. The captain of England reduced to having to go out and do a smoke and mirrors trick.
Also in that Mail interview is this exchange……
Hussain:…….”When you were offered the captaincy, ahead of the World Cup, did you feel it was a bit of a hospital pass because it was still Alastair Cook’s side?”
It was never Cooks side. It was The England team who Cook happened to captain. When will they stop with this Cooks England claptrap? But this from the man who screamed …..”REDEMPTION FOR COOK”
And by the way Nasser, if you ever read this. Why don’t you in your next interview with Cook invite him to apologise for his bitter, self serving attack on Morgan after the World Cup?
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This was a bloody stage managed interview from beginning to end, appropriately on the second anniversary . The bloody ECB and their press stooges won’t be satisfied until they’ve airbrushed cricket out of the public consciousness, and then we will all have piped down!!
I wonder how many of the “fearless and independant” hacks were at Giles’s birthday bash??
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To state the obvious, Morgan doesn’t pick the players
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#Obsessed, part 94:
See the first three comments here, on an article about IRELAND.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/08/boyd-rankin-tim-murtagh-ireland-world-t20-squad
Bloody alpha and omega of your BTL nightmares, that little crew.
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The usual useful idiots.
Never about the why, always about the personality. While they carry on, England have their core base.
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Four comments now. Out of nine in total.
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Now just the eight out of fifteen, six of them by wctt or aquitted.
Includes wctt, king of self-awareness, stating: “he’d be better off ignoring it, but that isn’t his strongest suit.”
Quebecer summed him up in one five-letter word.
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Ah you can always depend on good old StinkTank. Wish I hadn’t opened that link up but I just can;t help myself sometimes. Anyway at least it’s nice to think we can go to a WC and at least be competitive rather than stinking the place out and going home early.
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For those who don’t know, this is a very good explanation about the much wider issues at The Guardian. this will hopefully explain the sort of people running the paper now.
“In 2013, The Guardian filed some of the worst financial accounts in the newspaper’s history. The publishers were clearly in deep financial trouble, and were forced to sell-off some of their assets, simply to avoid immediately bankruptcy. The financial outlook appeared very grim.
But ‘hope’ was around the corner… although it was a vile kind of ‘hope’ indeed.
The Guardian was (quietly) relaunched, positioning itself primarily in the USA and Australia – whilst aiming to retain as much as possiible from its former days as a left-wing newspaper in Britain. New and mysterious ‘backers’ appeared, who were now controlling the political content of the newspaper. Alan Rusbridger was quickly removed and thrown on the rubbish-heap – the usual nonsense about wanting to develop his career (in retirement?).
It was a very simple idea – “buy up the opposition to neoconservative American ideas – and neatralise it with a daily diet of pro-Pentagon, pro-Washington, shabby indoctrination”. Unwanted old left-wingers were quietly pushed aside. Ambitious Americans like Hadley Freeman were shoved forwards. New right-wing writers were hired, such as “Rafael Behr”
But it gets worse. The Guardian is now not really written by Guardian journalists any longer. Instead, coverage of all “sensitive” topics has been franchised out to American rightwing organisations. Now we get articles and editorial which have been “sponsored by the John D Rockefeller Foundation” (at rightwing organisation), whose authorship and views chime perfectly with American hard-line exceptionalist Christian white right.
In summary, then – The Guardian which readers remember from the 1980s and 1990s no longer exists at all. Its exterior appearance and readership has been bought for cash by American right wing organisations… but covertly, so that readers “believe” they are still reading The Guardian.”
The Guardian in my opinion is now the most dishonest newspaper in the UK. Whatever your politics, you want to know what the paper actually stands for, The Mail, The Murdoch press is up front that they are right of centre, The Guardian is pretending to be something it no longer is. It has not the integrity or decency to share this with its readers.
In many ways this is typical of the way their cricket coverage has dealt with the ICC. They don’t tell you about their conflicts of interest. The guardian is now no longer for the little people but the global elites. No surprise they are at home wining and dining with the cricket elites.
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From my position here in the US, having started reading the Guardian online daily around 2009 up to today, what you say rings true – at about the time you mentioned, it started feeling and acting much less like what it used to be and more like a US media outlet.
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To be fair, wctt, while thoroughly irritating, is recognisably a thinking human being who likes cricket, while aquitted is a genuine troll. It has no ideas at all except to post as many provocative lies and ad-homs as can possibly be achieved during its waking hours. It may even be several people, judging by the number of posts.
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I genuinely don’t understand people like aquitted. In a professional sense, I’d feel sympathy for them and probably check out their mental health issues, but on CiF they get under my skin and I can’t help feeding them.
*rage at self*
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Everyone has a price.
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ECB and our friend Mr Strauss must be running scared by now. KP playing at the top of his game, praised by teams for his assistance with young players and his dressing room guidance .Mr Popular everywhere but in England.My first thought after reading that article was why Hussain asked Eoin that question. Trouble making. Only answer is ECB trying to drive the final nail back in the coffin but it keeps popping up.Hussain their mouthpiece on this occasion.Eoin and KP are mates and am sure they have an understanding about the problem.The team, no matter how happy we are told they are know that going to India without KP is signing their death warrant.KP is not going away He will always be larger than life.
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