KP

Him Again

LordCanisLupus11 Comments

Hate Weekly

In South Africa there came some rumblings. A noise English cricket has learned to rile itself over. A cacophany sure to light up the social media hordes. A din “no-one” wants.

Yep. You know who has made back-to-back centuries in the T20 competition in South Africa, the Ram Slam. Accompanying this are the usual cries for his return to the England set up, for the ECB/Strauss/Cook to swallow their pride and bring him back. Accompanying those cries we see those implacably opposed denigrating the achievement (domestic bowling, big difference between this and test cricket, rubbish in UAE last time around) as if this is a selection issue based on ability.

I’m writing about it, so I can’t exactly say I’m sick of it can I? I can’t exactly moan at others talking about it when I was accused in Wisden last year or having the effect of constantly beating others about the head with my constant repetition. But it’s the same old, same old. The same personalities, the same arguments, the same rambling debate. KP should be playing test cricket for England, if we select on merit. I think you might have something wrong with your analytical skills if that wasn’t your point of view. It’s not that he’s made runs in a hit and giggle competition, it’s that he has the temperament and the skill to play test cricket. There might be quibbles over fitness, which only KP himself can answer, but on ability with the bat. Stop being idiots.

There is a school of thought that he should play for England in the World T20. Well of course he should. Now that the ECB’s Lancaster fox has been well and truly short, and culture isn’t all, the reasons not to pick him now seem daft. Players who may put up a block, like Cook, Anderson and Broad, won’t be playing. Morgan wants him, or so he indicated. But he won’t.

So, instead of watching him in the World T20, we’ll have to rely on him having a pop at county cricket:

https://twitter.com/KP24/status/662633768751120385

Trolling the ECB and the haters:

https://twitter.com/KP24/status/663249764021063680

Having a pop at Dominic Cork:

https://twitter.com/KP24/status/662182589483106304

Holiday snaps:

https://twitter.com/KP24/status/661770024403759104

Personal grooming

https://twitter.com/KP24/status/661900706601938944

And people who berate me for being obsessed, having a massive conflab about him on Twitter! 🙂

Cheers.

Paraxylene

LordCanisLupus97 Comments

First of all, some house notices.

The Ashes Panel #006 is in the books, and I’ve just now sent the questions for the seventh panel to lucky recipients. You get a doozy of a Question 5. Do well with it.

On The Extra Bits, I concocted a little post on books. I’d be happy to hear what you think are good and bad ones, and perhaps make some recommendations for others. The Extra Bits is meant to be a bit gentler than here, so no wars, eh!

It’s been a great week on here, and I was pleased we got a decent response to the Ashes ODI thread yesterday. There will be one for tomorrow’s game as well.

Now, to the meat of this post, and it’s going to be a bit of a ramble, so do keep with me.

Item 1 – A Legendary Tweet.

Now my flabber was gasted. I mean, this is really just utterly superb. A puff piece? Selfey accuses someone of writing a puff piece?

This is like shooting fish in a barrel, even before we look at the hilarious mis-spelling of Paul Hayward’s name. I’m a bloke who often falls foul of the old auto-correct, so perhaps jumping on that was a tad harsh. Maybe I jumped on it because it included the words “puff piece” and “star” columnist.

I mean, puff piece..

In the process Cook, a genuinely good man and one of the greatest of all England Test batsmen, was subjected to a disproportionate amount of abuse, some of it carefully orchestrated and relentless, of a kind that, in my experience anyway, has never before been directed at any England cricketer.

Genuine puffery.

Against Sri Lanka the margin between winning and losing the series was as slender as could be: six inches more carry on the final delivery at Lord’s; and survival of two more deliveries at Headingley

A classic of its genre.

Without question, though, the other members have been sufficiently convinced that whatever else they may feel, the fact that India is “inside the tent pissing out”, as some like to term it, rather than the reverse, is actually something of a political coup.

Ah yes, the ICC stitch-up. Nothing to see here.

Then there was this non-puff piece…. https://dmitrihdwlia.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/morris-flower1.jpg

And this one…https://dmitrihdwlia.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/downton-selvey.jpg

Not enough puff for your pastry….

As a collective, the team had forgotten how to forge partnerships. There was a complete systematic breakdown of the batting unit. It may say more about them than Gooch, but it is said that many of the players – and shame on them for it, if true – simply stopped listening to the record. Maybe it was a generational thing: Gooch is 60.

Augmented by this tremendous Tweet:

Maybe it’s a puff piece when others do it, eh?

Then there’s Moores…

Read the post this comes from again. God, I was a much better blogger then – https://dmitrihdwlia.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/well-good-morning-judge-how-you-doing-today/

The fact is, that I’ve not even mentioned the Tweets about Saker, absolving him of all blame, and the countless times he’s backed Cook when he was under pressure for his place, no doubt believing he is vindicated. Calling for KP’s return, or considering it, is every bit as much puffery as the crap he wrote about Downton, or Flower, or Gooch. I laughed hugely at this nonsense.

BTW – want an old gold post, which I used in this research, then read this again. https://dmitrihdwlia.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/behind-the-hatred-there-lies-a-murderous-desire-for-love/

Which leads me on to Part Two

kp FO

I’ve not spoken a lot about Pietersen recently, but the tide of fury is rising. In the past two or so months, since Strauss came out with that pile of drivel about trust and what-not, I’ve seen a decided change in approach. The mere mention of Pietersen’s name is to bring in some sort of collective shock, or even worse, collective contempt. Mention him to one of the media behemoths so staunchly stood behind the aristocracy of the game, and it’s no better than “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”. Muppet did it the other day, the contemptuous prick that he is, as if our wishes and concerns are of no relevance to him.

Remember the arguments made by media folk, and those anti-KP’ers at the time…. “There’s no vacancy….who would you drop……this team needs to grow and develop”. As with most of the pathetic arguments about KP, that one has been shot out of the water. By dropping Ballance after a rickety start to the summer, and promoting Bell up to three, they created a vacancy, as many thought might happen. Now, as much as Bairstow deserves a place in the team, should KP not be eligible for consideration? Note, those of you who think this is all black and white and are quick to throw their nonsensical bollocks at me, I’m not saying KP should be an automatic choice, but 8181 test runs seems rather persuasive when looking for evidence. But you can’t just shut down the debate because you don’t like to hear it. Strauss cut off one of our options on “trust”. This may be that Cook doesn’t want him back, but neither Strauss nor Cook have the guts to tell us that, instead we heard it via Dean Wilson in the Mirror.

Pietersen, in the eyes of his critics can do no right. He has finished his T20 spell in St Lucia and this coincided with a test loss. I suppose that is his fault. He has an ego – news to you, pretty much all top level sportsmen do – and probably thinks he should be playing. Many of us share that contention. This argument isn’t going to die with any zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz tweets, or people telling the likes of me and Maxie to stop it, we’ve got no chance of him coming back. It, as always, spectacularly misses the point. It’s personal politics, and it’s potentially harming England. I think it was, and probably still is, especially driven by Giles Clarke (and potentially Cook and Flower, although who knows how influential he is now). And yes, KP’s book is not irrelevant, but these are grown adults and they should sort it out. It’s not too late.

What I won’t let go is a tweet like this. I won’t give the name, but I’ll copy what he tweeted to me a couple of days ago.

it was only a matter of time before the worst thing for English cricket was heralded as a saviour again

The worst thing for English cricket. That’s just unutterable bollocks and despite frequent points that you may question many things, but you can’t question what he gave to England by way of entertainment and match-winning innings (hey, the worst thing for English cricket saved us an Ashes series. What did the second worst thing do?). I don’t get it. I call Graham Gooch “the devil” but christ on a bike, I don’t demean his batting, his great innings, his determination because I don’t like him. Bloody hell. This was a man WHO TURNED HIS BACK ON ENGLAND FOR MONEY and he gets revered above by Selfey, while KP TURNED HIS BACK ON MONEY FOR ENGLAND and gets slagged off! Hell.

I also know of no-one who thinks KP is a saviour, which also appeared in that tweet. Another sweeping generalisation of the position perpetrated by numpties. My line is this – is he in our Best XI? Simple as. I’m sure Bell’s sour demeanour at present and stupefying lack of form is absolutely intrinsically vital for this team’s performance while someone who might just go out and give it a whack would be a dressing room cancer the likes of which we’ll never recover from.

I said it almost a year ago when that post went viral….

But on Day 5, this looked in jeopardy. One man held the line. While all the other top batsmen got out, one man rode an early piece of luck to then just take Australia to the cleaners. Aided and abetted by a spin bowler people derided, that one man kept the dream alive and then made us believe it was all over. Without that one man, Australia would have been chasing 200 or less to win the Ashes in 50-60 overs. You want to know what would have happened without that one man’s innings, you saw exactly what in Adelaide 18 months later.

So, all you “haters” out there, remember that. Remember it when you boo him. Remember it when you spit out YOUR bile (for that’s something I’ve been accused of) on the various sites. Remember it when you demean a great career. Remember it when you slag him off relentlessly as some sort of traitor despite the fact he was sacked, has been abused by the cricket authorities more than any other player I can remember, treated with disdain and contempt by a media in their back-pockets because maybe, just maybe, he didn’t like them. He is a bit arrogant? So what? He scored masses or runs, loads of hundreds, played injured (and was then slagged off if he took time off to cure or rest them). never gave less than his all (remember Headingley 2012, before textgate, when he opened the batting for the team in the second innings?) and yet still there’s this hatred. For what?

I get it. People don’t like him. People despise him. I happen to enjoy his batting and to me that matters. Until someone comes up with more than a half-arsed dossier, leaked like so much to do with KP was, and tells me how it was, then I will believe there’s a stitch up and that the main sufferers are those that want the best players playing for England. I understand the other view – about building a new team, under new players with a solid figure as coach – but I disagree with it. The bile, if you want to call it that, comes from the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, and the demeaning of his record and his contribution. The almost Orwellian erasing of his history, the Lynton Crosby-eque “dead cat” mention of his name among media types. The sheer fact that a score of 355 is dismissed casually by many.

By the man in Mumbai, the conductor at Colombo, the harrier at Headingley and the bringer of brilliance in Bridgetown in the World T20. Yeah. He’s been the worst all right.

(Before people say the individual meant going forward, he had plenty of opportunities to clarify that, but he never did.)

The worst thing for English cricket? Really?

After all, you can only get better from a 400 run smashing, can’t you?

Violence Through Silence

LordCanisLupus28 Comments

I think it shows how weary I’ve become that when I saw the article (quite early in the evening) on KP and the commentary stint I thought I’d leave it be. Nothing surprises me with these clowns any more. That is should go through the conduit of the Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday is little surprise. That Patrick Collins thinks it’s great is little surprise. I’ve no doubt the likes of Pam, who was probably jumping the moon after her little Andy came in and we’ve had this massive turnaround (drawn series at home to New Zealand), and is calling us all KP fanboys, is happy too.

There’s a super piece by Maxie over at TFT if you want to comment. I have and so have other familiar traitors posters (I jest). But I’ve just re-read the Mail article and two bits in particular make my blood boil.

The ECB were outmanoeuvred by Pietersen and his advisors, led by Piers Morgan, during a sustained public relations campaign on his behalf after he was sacked following England’s 5-0 Ashes drubbing in Australia last year.

and

Pietersen has previously impressed as a television pundit, but pressure from the ECB to keep him at arm’s length this summer indicates that they remain extremely wary of his capacity to polarise public opinion and potentially alienate England supporters with his outspoken views. (my emphasis).

Listen here, journos. I don’t think we had everything to do with it, but it wasn’t you keeping “outside cricket” going, and it wasn’t KP either. There was no sustained PR campaign throughout last year when KP kept largely silent on the matters of his dismissal, as he was bound to do. They had a strategy. Stand back and let the morons at the ECB, aided and abetted by the compliant media to do the rest. Just wait, and thou shall deliver.

The ECB did itself in by appointing Paul Downton, and all the campaign had to do was keep quiet, let some of your lot throw themselves in front of the mighty Paul, and call him Lord Aplomb, and then allow him to open his mouth. I miss Downton because he was useless. He had all the suitability to the job as I have of being a court jester. There’s nothing sustained about the PR Campaign. He wrote a book and you lot took out the bits that mattered to you, and ignored some pretty salient points. And you can’t go f–king anywhere without Piers Morgan’s name coming up. Grow up you morons and admit it. Some of his fans, and many who hated the way he was scapegoated, didn’t buy what you fools were selling. Now some of you have buyer’s remorse on Downton in particular, and Moores as well, you want us to say sorry? Do one.

Which leads to the second point. His commentary may alienate some of the cricketing public. I’ve seen it all now. What do you think his sacking did? Do you think I’ve been writing this blog because I love it and accept it? Do you think I care enough to spend all the hours that I have on this and HDWLIA because I’ve not been alientated by this. And you care about those who have done nothing but insult us all the way because of it? Because we were right over Downton, over Moores, over Cook’s position in the ODI, and yes, over his leadership of the test team. You worry about alienating the people who have stuck their heads in the sand?

It would be hilarious if these chumps weren’t serious. Well done Sam. Paul would be very proud.

Trust – 2

LordCanisLupus152 Comments

First of all, I have some bad news.

It is time to have an honest conversation about thelegglance. After Wednesday morning, with his blogging equivalent of a 355 not out under his belt with his post A Matter of Life And Trust, it was decided, unanimously, by the blog board, that he would no longer be retained by Being Outside Cricket. I cannot trust him not to overshadow me again, and he’s also upset my support staff, Armand the Rubber Duck, and my border collie (although I’ve not asked him yet, being in a different country and all that) and have decided that in the short term, Being Outside Cricket will move forward with a fresh and exciting skipper at the helm (me). HE IS NOT BANNED. DEFINITELY NOT. We’ll see, if he agrees to be utter crap in future, whether we can get that trust back. Until then, he can get on a plane to Dubai and write for The Full Toss for all I care. I just want the best for Being Outside Cricket, as long as they aren’t more talented than me.

Seriously, my thanks to Vian for the post. It meant I didn’t have to write much the same thing, but in a much less focused manner, and it was one of the best posts I’ve read anywhere. I’m biased, but as he knows, when we had that legendary Krusovice evening that I’d wanted him to come on board, and knew what an asset he’d be. He just better not do it too often!!!!

I thought I’d do a little bit on some of the side issues. I listened to the two podcasts on Tuesday night. The Switch Hit was interesting principally for David Hopps nailing the Alastair Cook issue. I hear many times that “no-one dislikes Cook” when there is a growing element that do. Hatred is too strong a word for me. When he said that the continued, repeated backing made Cook sound entitled, you could have heard the cheer from my mother-in-law’s kitchen. He got it. He actually got it. The rest of the podcast was a bit nondescript to me, missing a Butcher or a Dobell, and Jarrod went a bit OTT. But it got a damn sight nearer to the points we are making than most.

Then came the TMS podcast, weighing in at a brutal one hour and 45 minutes. At the end of it I felt thoroughly crushed. What the hell has happened to Phil Tufnell? He’s about as rebellious as Marks & Spencer. Is it too simple to ascribe his views to becoming a paid-up member of the Middlesex Mafia? “When I did wrong, at least I said sorry” he said. Phil Tufnell was a rebel who on his day, and I was there for one of them, was a brilliant bowler. He was a maverick. He didn’t seem to do well with authority. What possesses him to side against someone you would think was in his sort of field? I was surprised how willing he was to side with the authorities.

Jonathan Agnew was blaming it all on Graves. At the time Colin Graves reached out to KP, England were performing appallingly in the World Cup. Downton was a dead man walking. There, presumably, was no fixed thoughts on the way forward and who would be the new personnel. Moores was also probably a dead man walking, because I’m not 100% convinced this was a Strauss decision in its entirety, much as the KP one wasn’t either, in my view. He may have been too hasty, but lord, he thought he was dealing with adults, not children. Now he’s in a hell of a spot, probably, again as a mere “guess” because I don’t believe Giles Clarke is going to be a silent partner, but a very influential back seat driver (I must find where he was referenced in the decision making process) who has made sure, before he left that KP wasn’t getting back. (It wasn’t the book, I think, on that, but when KP listed who needed to go before he got back – Downton, Moores and Clarke). Agnew did admit that KP is entitled to feel let down, but that it was Graves’s promise, not Strauss’ nonsense that was the problem.

The other point that Jonathan made was one that’s really itching at me. He said that he speaks to other players in the team who feel that the support isn’t there for them from the fans. Instead of really focusing why, Jonathan seemed to be exhorting us to get behind the lads. I’ve heard the same from George Dobell, put in a slightly different way. The fact is that this is down, fairly and squarely to the ECB. I understand those people I see on Twitter who say the team matters more than any individual, and certainly more than any organisation. I understand, but I do not agree. I’m at an age where I’ve been taken the mickey out of enough by authorities to know they don’t care about me. If I disagree with them, I will tell them, and I will fight and get angry if needs be. The ECB couldn’t give a stuff whether I support them or not. They’ve shown that by their attitude to those of us “outside cricket”. Those who don’t care about that, fair enough. I think you are wrong not to.

The ECB sacked one of their best players in February 2014. They did not tell us why. They clearly believed over a short period of time we’d die down. They were wrong. They thought that a decent test series win against India would calm it down. They were wrong. They thought that the silent treatment of the book would mean the England community would turn against KP, but they were wrong. They thought that he might be permanently finished as a player on the basis of a poor T20 Blast season and a disappointing IPL. They were wrong. They have one hope left. That time will calm us down. 16 months on, and with the events of Tuesday, there’s absolutely no sign of that.

The Cook issue is for another post, but Jonathan ought to realise how much many of the angry brigade don’t like the way he’s been reinforced at every turn, and now, it seems, having a veto on selection. It’s hard to pull for a team, even with really exciting players like Buttler and Root, and really promising talent like Ballance, Stokes, Jordan and Moeen, when their positive results keep Cook in his position. I can’t betray my feelings, Jonathan. I really can’t.

Trust – 1

LordCanisLupus133 Comments

What else could I call this post? While my good friend and colleague on here, Vian, aka thelegglance, held the fort so spectacularly this morning, I sat in my room, here in New Jersey, at 6 in the morning wondering what the hell was going on. I couldn’t shout or swear at the screen because didn’t want to wake the beloved or mother-in-law up. I was interested in seeing how the new dawn of Harrison and Strauss looked, and what new ideas they had going forward. I also wondered how prepared and how briefed they were for the KP onslaught.

I sort of owe Stephen Brenkley an apology. Compared to this, Paul Downton and Peter Moores handled their questioning with aplomb last year. I’ve just seen George tweet “Bring Back Downton” and I’m inclined to believe it might not be worse. Downton could have been told to wind his neck in, eat humble pie and go with a selection policy based on merit. If he didn’t like it, he knew where the door was. The ECB needed a scapegoat after the World Cup, Downton inserted mouth and put his foot in it, and eh voila, we had our token sacrifice. But by doing this early enough, one man would still have a vital say in the replacement.

Someone said today, I think it was Harrison, it may have been Strauss, that the decision to axe KP, although he’s not banned (they think they are so effing clever, don’t they) was unanimous at board level, with the names mentioned being Strauss, Harrison, Graves and Giles Clarke. There you have it. That man Clarke. There was absolutely no way he’d countenance a return to the fold for Pietersen, an uppity man who dared challenge his monstrous ego. No way would Clarke allow this. Whether he should have been mentioned is a point for debate. After all. wasn’t he being shunted overseas, out of the way, not to get involved and let Graves run the show. Or is he the ultimate back seat driver? Instead we’ve got into this position. Downton’s early termination by ECB standards may have been part of the plan. They needed a scapegoat and no-one was going to bemoan his departure. By doing so swiftly enough the current Chairman was going to get involved in the selection process. There have been whispers in the press that there was no way he would go quietly. So, how better to construct a false competition, with the illusion of rivals for the post, and then, when one dropped out and one was ignored, we arrived at Strauss. A man with well known views on Kevin Pietersen, made clear in a book (funny how that worked, eh) and on air. Hey, that’s all right, he took time away from the game to do all that. Every man and his dog knew he was biding time before getting back into cricket admin. I think I’ve spent 500 words saying I don’t believe Giles Clarke is going to let go at all. We’ll see.

So to today, and Andrew Strauss. Having woken up appallingly early, I managed to get a Sky Sports News feed, and given no-one else was using much internet at 6am, I got an unbuffered stream. My first surprise was that we weren’t shown the press conference, a la Downton, but that there would be interviews first. OK. I didn’t hold out much hope. Tim Abraham comes off as a good guy, but he’s not Pat Murphy. Now, I’ll have to trust to memory and Vian’s recall here, but the first words out were something along the lines of “we need to have an honest, open discussion about Kevin Pietersen.” I sighed. I couldn’t swear. I sighed. By implication this means you have not been honest in the past about it, and that you’ve not been open at all. You’ve had all night to prepare for this question and you come out with startingly obvious platitudes that those of us who have followed this for 16 months now will see straight through. Andrew, old bean, you threw a fit over text messages and you called him a c—. You are not some impartial, detached honest broker. Don’t hold yourself up to be one.

To his credit, this early gambit didn’t hold, and he didn’t even try. What followed was bilge. Some believe it is those dastardly lawyers, clamming everything up again. That pesky employment law, eh? But what we had was the key element of trust, and Strauss couldn’t make up his mind if the key factor was at corporate level (a unanimous view of the board) or his own (we’ve had serious trust issues and I don’t trust him). There’s the first error, a massive one. He put his own personal beef above English cricket and he never went into detail why. Not that I heard. When even Paul Newman says we needed to read between the lines, you know this was not working. Only a couple of usual pillocks – Selfey, Lovejoy Jr – went hurrah! Here’s his excerpt from the book: Driving Ambition 1So a grudge, eh? Yet again, when it comes to the crunch, Strauss never went into this with an open mind. But we knew this from what he had said before. But many came to the same conclusion – what the hell is he on about? This bloke (KP) was just completing his 355 not out – a special score – and Strauss is still going on about a beef three years ago? What was he talking about? What the hell did it matter? How many runs did “trust” score? Oh, I’ve seen those who liken sports teams to corporations say that you can’t do what he did and return. Pietersen would be the one with the problem, not them. It would be Pietersen ostracised in a dressing room, not them. If KP could go in there and take it, then so should they.

No. I came to a pretty swift thought. This is about Alastair Cook. Again. Cook doesn’t want him back, he never goes into detail why this should be the case, and Cook rules this roost. Once again, another senior management figure gives this man carte blanche. Denials do nothing to convince me otherwise.

Strauss gave it the big one over sacking Moores. Bravo. He wasn’t tactically adept enough at the international level. Well, that’s nice. I suppose all those press boys who fell over themselves last year have recanted their sins on both Moores and the man who appointed him (sound of crickets). There then came all the stuff that Andrew Miller, in his excellent Cricinfo piece, called the “white noise of corporate bullshit”. If you’ve read Driving Ambition, and I have, the bit I most recall was Strauss’ devotion to managment text books, team bonding exercises and military disciplines. People here will know how much I absolutely adore all of that. We try to escape this sort of claptrap in watching sports. I’ll bet Lionel Messi has never read a management text book in his life. I’ll bet Ronaldo doesn’t do team bonding. It’s drivel. We are playing sports, not planning a mission to invade Afghanistan, or to deliver a leveraged buy out. But here they were all trotted out, the most vacuous of them all being the “long-term strategy”.

We had the shock that he was keeping Eoin Morgan as captain of the ODI team – hey, while we’ve just sacked the coach, let’s kick him even harder by saying the World Cup was ALL his fault by keeping the captain (who just happens to be a Middlesex player, but I wouldn’t be that cheap to draw a conclusion based on that). Then there was the promotion of Joe Root to vice-captain, which, who knows, may have been based on the legendary leaked performance on some leadership exercise by Ian Bell to demote him back to the ranks. Then there was the woolly philosophy of separate ODI and Test teams, but under one coach. There would be more of a distinction but we’ll flog a head coach to death to do it. Well, good luck with that.

And that was pretty much it. A trust issue where there was no-one to blame, and I didn’t go into the semantics of the following old shite where he said KP had no future, but he absolutely wasn’t banned. Some contrition for the manner of Moores dismissal, but a dismissal of Moores himself (and how that contrasts with his book which when KP and Moores were having their spat, Strauss almost indicated that “it was nothing to do with me guv”. Driving Ambition 2He certainly worked with him there, didn’t he? (Driving Ambiton, by Andrew Strauss is available from normal sources if you wish to read the full book). Tom Harrison came on and did a speak-your-Downton regime. First of all, his credibility is shot because he looks like Tim Westwood. Secondly, when challenged on the KP front, he then did what all good charlatans do when caught on a weak issue for them, and said, I don’t want to talk about the past, it’s about the future, and then went on about excitement and long-term strategies. I lost the will. He’s dead to me. No more than a Downton in a sharp suit, but with more of an attitude.

Of course, since then, the main copy has been provided by the Pietersen sacking (for that’s what it is, don’t bullshit us) and what KP had or had not been told.

Like last night, I’ll divide the post in to two, and have a real pop in the second part. Because I want my dinner, and I’ve topped 1500 words. I’ll hand it over to thelegglance to take things up.

Also, read The Full Toss (James and Maxie), and Andrew Miller on cricinfo (which also has a link to Switch Hit).

UPDATE – Not really been at it today, even though I seem to have devoted a full day of my holiday for this nonsense. I’m likely going to take a couple of days away from the blog (don’t hold me to it) and I know Vian has something up his sleeve for tomorrow. I feel a bit of my spirit is broken, to be honest. I’ve felt this way before. I get over it, and get on with it. It wasn’t helped by listening to Tuffers and Vaughan, to be honest. If we showed one tenth of the bile for Cook or Strauss that is doled out to Pietersen, we’d be annihilated. We don’t come anywhere near close.

326 Not Out – Part 2

LordCanisLupus52 Comments

COOKY

Read Part 1 below – a bit of a diary of the day up to the TMS tweet. Now I’ll really get stuck into this nonsense.

Let’s take ourselves back to the end of the day’s play. The reaction to the 326 that I saw was mostly of the “wow” kind. A few churls who wouldn’t have cared if it was Marshall and Holding in their pomp at each end had a pop, but they looked rather stupid. One moron of the month, who Clive rightly called a troll said “one innings in four years” which not only questioned his recognition of how relatively rare 300s are, but also his numeric ability given KP’s knocks since 2011 – you know, the golden trio even his worst critics can’t help bu admire. I’m used to this utter nonsense now. It’s tedious, it’s dull, a bit like this blog to non-believers.

So to the TMS Tweet.

Seems pretty unequivocal. Of course it’s a leak, or whatever you want to call it, because a leak isn’t a leak if it isn’t a leak or something. Some people got rather uppity about all that over the weekend (no, not you LB), as if we were doubting their journalistic abilities. But this looked like a leak to me, this one… if it looks like a leak, smell lies a leak, it probably is one. So the reaction was one of fury.

I absolutely one hundred percent stick behind this one. I’m deadly serious. I’m not over-reacting. This blog is built on these foundations. Call it as you see it on DAY ONE. I called for Downton’s dismissal the day after he said something utterly stupid and now I call this.

I am seriously not impressed by Tom Harrison. Oh, I know, he wouldn’t give a toss if he read it, and why should he? He’s a highly paid executive and I’m just a mere bilious inadequate with a small platform and loyal support. But this was another one we were told was made of the right stuff. A former county pro, who went into media rights management and is now in charge of something or other at the ECB.

This is him.

HarrisonSo far, he’s sacked Downton, which was a fair move but bloody hell, he took his time over it as he presided over a costs and structure review – and boy does Harrison like a structure. Then he presided over the absolute clusterf*ck that was the dismissal of Moores. In the interim he employed head-hunters to come up with Andrew Strauss for a new post called Director, (and that comma says so much) England Cricket (or whatever – I cannot be bothered with this muppetry) and now, that is coming home to roost. They had it all planned. Andrew Strauss would be unveiled, they’d say a teary farewell to Peter Moores, and then new Management Structure England would move forward to the New Zealand series and the Ashes.

But, as we know, the information on Moores leaked. How it leaked we do not know, because, well we’ve done that already above. So a decent bloke (I think I’ve been consistent in that) was humiliated in public by this organisation. You’d think they’d feel a little chastened, a little wounded, maybe a touch humble. But I’m not sensing humility from Harrison. I’m sensing someone who is a little too cock-sure and seems to think he’s wielding a big stick. Just a hunch, and we’ll see how it plays out. Not been too wrong on them so far.

So, with plans completely blown out of the water, a contingent strategy took place, and the announcements were made on Saturday. Vian’s post below captures my thoughts brilliantly. My thanks for such a really good post on the matter. After this nonsense we were advised there would be a press conference today (Monday) or tomorrow (Tuesday). No-one was quite sure. There seemed to be utter confusion, while at the same time trying to exude some sort of decisive authority. This smacked of Captain Mainwaring shouting “I’m In Charge” as his bunch of old timers rambled off here and there.

Now, they knew the press conference, on Tuesday, was always going to throw up the KP question. At this stage (Sunday) it was an easy case to answer. Let him make some runs, he’s not in our plans at the moment, and it’s difficult to see him in our plans going forward. But he has to make runs. Even this has not, it appeared, satisfied our captain. I’ve been told a ton of times how nice a guy Cook is, but he doesn’t seem to act like it it. Either he’s being horribly misinterpreted here, or there’s something I’m missing, but every time someone seems to broach a rapprochement with KP, there’s a column saying Cook’s angry at someone for it, being Aggers (reportedly) over his TMS stint at the World Cup, or Graves for that message during the World Cup that got KP to sign for Surrey and play county cricket. It seems that Team England is run for the benefit of Team Cook. We’ve been down this road on this blog before. It really appears to me a him or me situation, a back me or sack me. In Downton, Cook had an implacable supporter. In Flower, behind the scenes wielding whatever power, he had someone in his camp if it means keeping KP at bay. And in Strauss, he has a man who KP fell out with, who didn’t want him to return to the team after Textgate, and who called him a c*** live on TV. I think, as they say in the legal world, these lot have “previous”.

I’ve been saying all along they’ve been leading him up the garden path. This is not an organisation steeped in an ability to admit mistakes. It refuses to believe it can ever be wrong on any matter, or admit it’s core policies are misguided or prone to scrutiny. This is a body that went into a major deal with a subsequently committed felon, and you’d gather from our governing bodies attitude to its culpability in the terms of “ooops, shucks, well, ok, never mind.” Collier, the architect supposedly of this kept his job for a mere six years after that. Clarke has had to be prised out of office with the promise of a lovely old international jolly. Hugh Morris presided over the Moore/Pietersen nonsense with all the authority of Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served, while throughout this period we had leaks/good journalism all over the shop. That an organisation is supposed to be anal about leaks lets so much information out, such as KP’s report, the dodgy dossier and the sacking of Moores II, is preposterous. They are a sick joke, with the emphasis on sick. It’s bloody ironic that the new chairman is called Graves. This is a place where common sense goes to die. Where good chaps preside over the serfs, and don’t you dare question authority.

Above all, this is an organisation that employed Paul Downton in a position of responsibility. You remember him. All aplomb and good impressions. He may have been a lovely guy, aren’t they all, but he was out of his depth from day one. He hid. When he spoke, we knew why he hid. But we are told that things will be different now. While Downton was removed from the game for a couple of decades, the new Director, England Cricket, will be more in touch. More in tune with the modern game.

The list of those who would be in for the job underwhelmed. While Michael Vaughan was an inspirational captain, he’s a twit online. Alec Stewart had experience of being a Team Director, but that didn’t count a jot, and really, were we enthused by his candidacy. Then there was Andrew Strauss. The last week has seen people falling over each other to tell us how tough he is, how single minded, how focused he was. How he’d do the best for English cricket. He is the ideal man to take us forward, a great captain, a great leader of men. The evidence? He got rid of Moores (or did he. I’ve heard from some that he was gone well before the announcement of Strauss….and I’m talking a couple of weeks). But if Strauss sacking Moores adds to the narrative, well, what’s the harm in that? Of course, we’d heard from Michael Vaughan that Moores wasn’t going to be sacked, and that he’d been told that the ECB were not going to take KP back. Then Strauss is their man, and Moores goes. It’s laughable. So Strauss has a big decision under his belt, so it seems.

And it is abundantly clear, if I’m guessing, that the plan was to talk to KP before the presser to sort that out. They know that the question is going to come up, and I said how I thought they might answer it in part 1. But it’s easy to speak to KP with a forthright view if he’s not made runs. Now he has. 326 un-ignorable runs. 326 stabs into the heart of the ECB with their high-fallutin’ principles and beliefs. 326 jabs at their pompous approach, their holier than thou, high and mighty, we are in charge balloon of infallibility. 326 reasons why they are wrong to adopt a policy of selection that excludes someone because someone inferior doesn’t get on with him. 326 reasons why this country is a bag of shite when it comes to creating and maintaining great English sporting teams. It’s too much about getting along, and not enough about getting runs.

So when faced with the utter shit-storm the initial twitter post from TMS unleashed, with people going absolutely puce with rage (me included), there was a very quick back-track via Nick Hoult in the Telegraph. Lawrence Booth has reported much the same thing. But this is them trying to be clever and the ECB-watching public out there are not going to be fooled one iota. Their policy, if not explicit, but as close as you can get to it, will be KP over their dead bodies. Even now these control freak, superiority complex muppets will be concocting something that is designed to fool the public tomorrow. You won’t. Without the simple mantra that the team will be selected on merit, as it should be, anything else is claptrap. We won’t get fooled for building for 2019, because we built for this World Cup and blew it up in a tantrum last year. Setting long-distant dates, talking about long-term strategies is management bullshit. You going to give all the punters who paid all that cash for the Ashes some money back as you ain’t giving it your all? Like hell. It’s talking down to us. Some, in their bilious hatred for KP will accept this bag of nonsense. More shame them.

So, on the off chance that Strauss will surprise us, which I doubt, I’ll hold all my fire. But here’s the Dmitri Declaration. If I hear anything other than the England cricket team will be selected on merit, and no player is excluded, and if he is playing well and is deemed to be the best available at that time, regardless of age, then that player will be selected. But as this is a team that selected Tredwell over Rashid, Trott over Lyth and is busy flogging Anderson and Broad to a standstill, it’s all a smokescreen.

To the final insult, the last in a long line. The Graves comment that KP’s not available for selection as he’s not playing county cricket and not scoring runs. There have been denials that a deal has ever been struck, that this was a mere innocent comment and nothing had changed. KP is many things, not all good, but he’s not stupid. He returned because he felt there was a genuine chance of a rapprochement. He felt Graves would take none of the previous regimes nonsense and set them straight. To that end he negotiated an exit to his IPL contract, and gave up a decent, not huge, sum of money, and does not take a salary from Surrey. If there were “no chance” of a recall, then they should have said so, there and then. They didn’t. They hoped he would fail, would not score sufficient runs. That he would wither and die, and sod off to the CPL later in the summer. KP’s not that gullible that he wouldn’t keep that in his back pocket.

Now he makes 326, now we see them close ranks. Now we see them all but shut it off in perpetuity. That’s reprehensible, and let’s see them get their way out of this. A good number of cricket lovers are enraged at this apparant duplicity. That this isn’t just getting shot of a trouble-maker but exacting a bitter, cruel revenge. I am a KP fan. This man gave me some of the greatest thrills of my cricketing life. I would have loved to have been there today. I’m desperately hoping he’ll be there at Beckenham in a fortnight’s time, but that looks unlikely. I’m not saying he’s an angel, but he’s among the best we have. But we don’t play the game that way.

From the outside this is an organisation not representing its core supporters. This is an organisation that leaks. This is an organisation that thinks it is too clever by half. This is an organisation that is rotten to the core, steeped in some misty-eyed half-baked concoction of superiority complex elitism and management philosophy claptrap, that only they can judge and only they can decide. This is an organisation that couldn’t organise a piss up in brewery, a sacking on the Apprentice, or honest broking in a room full of spivs. It is diseased, it is malevolent and it has to go. Yes. We need a new organisation running the game, free of all this rubbish, these agenda, this structure. There’s another structure for you, Tom.

Sure, I’m outside cricket. I’ve never felt more outside than I do now. Judging by the reactions of many today, so do they. It’s an incredibly sad day when our own organisation rushes to dampen down the enthusiasm felt by many when a player who gave great service to England, who played many amazing innings, who had us glued to our screens, buying our tickets, makes a thrilling riposte and does what he thought he need to do, only to be told within a matter of hours, it seems, to foxtrot oscar. Someone put cricket on the back pages today, and instead of welcoming it, our beloved guardian authority hated it. They’ve got it all right, ain’t they….

Let’s be pleasantly surprised tomorrow, eh? Anyone betting on it?

kp FO

326 Not Out – Part 1

LordCanisLupus7 Comments

Not Wanted

For some context, and a piece that sums up my views on KP, try this.

Where on earth do you start on a day like this? Let’s set the scene a little. As some of you know, I’m on holiday (vacation out here) in a place called Cape May, New Jersey. It isn’t the Jersey of Springsteen, with the New York overspill or the refineries and factories. It isn’t the Jersey Shore of TV infamy, nor is it Atlantic City, where I’ve been today, but a quiet, sleepy seaside town, with one side on the Atlantic Ocean and the other on the Delaware Bay. I’m 200 yards from the sea. It’s lovely.

So you’ll understand that I wasn’t up with the lark this morning, and rather enjoying a lie-in. I awoke, at around 2pm I think, UK time to be greeted with a number of comments on the blog remarking that KP had made a century. “What a lovely start to the day” I thought, and then chuckled to myself that those haters would be tripping over themselves to diminish it. Also, taking the game situation into context, Surrey really needed those runs, and needed more. What did I do though? I tweeted

Lawrence Booth got back to me (he didn’t know how the day would end up)

I responded…

I calmed down a little, and had a little walk, and came back to see the Pietersen machine rolling along, allied to a tail that didn’t give it away. 150 was up…. and I was busy working out what he needed to make to get the average over 100 if he got out (188). When he passed that, the next target was 200, and so that was passed. By now the joy was let forth. I never believed he would get back to smashing any attack around for these sort of scores. A century or two would be ignored, because, well, anyone gets them. But a double is not easily ignored – as Sky Sports pundits and hosts kept saying “if KP churns out a double hundred or two, then what…” As I left the house with a spring in my step and a little joy in my heart, I got on my international sim phone and followed the score up the Garden State Parkway. 220, 240, 255 (past his best score), 270, 290 and then….300.

Now, I don’t care what standard you play, but 300 is nothing to be trifled with. It is not to be ignored. If this were a player who had shown no aptitude for test cricket, had tried and failed, or was a promising youngster, maybe there’s an excuse. That isn’t what we are talking about here. We are talking about a test cricketer of proven ability, who not that long ago was making very decent centuries (anyone forget his Old Trafford hundred less than two years ago?) and had answered his critics by coming back to first class county cricket, a format that he doesn’t particularly cherish, and he’s smashed it everywhere. 326 not out. Ignore that.

I was so happy, I should have popped into the Golden Nugget and put money on 24.

So, I’m wandering around the shops and left the international phone in the car. Treated myself to a couple of things, and then went back to the car. As we’re crossing Little Egg Harbour, I saw the TMS Tweet.

And I went ballistic. Absolutely fucking ballistic.

You may have seen my twitter outpourings, but if not, just go on there and look for @DmitriOld . The ECB had chosen this moment to announce that they were not picking KP for England again. Ever. This would not happen. Not in a blue moon. No chance. Cut off without a prayer. Brought hope forward by intimating he had a chance, and when he stuffed it back at them, they said “no, sorry”.

Make no mistake, for all the weasel words we’ve heard since, where there has been some suppsoed back-tracking, we’ll get a restatement of Andrew Strauss’s position tomorrow (the one we read about weeks ago, and why we so opposed his appointment now) which will be all about building teams for 2019 blah blah blah and that KP will be 39 by then. If you fall for that old pony, you’ll fall for anything. They are blocking his way, no matter what. There will always be a reason not to pick him. If he followed this 300+ up with another monster score in his next outing, it won’t matter to these idiots, for idiots are what they are that they would rule out a monster talent returning to monster form. It IS one innings, and it IS just part of the road back. But this lot want to block it for what? Personal reasons? If he’s the best batsman, in form, in the country, you play him. It really isn’t that complicated. Let me effing well repeat that. IT REALLY ISN’T THAT COMPLICATED.

This is the ECB in a nutshell. Cricket is meant to be exciting, it is meant to be fun to watch, it is meant to thrill as well as enthrall, to appreciate graft and genius in all its forms. It’s not a bloody game won by management consultants, self-help books on army drills and team-building nonsense. It’s won by talent, it’s won by attitude, it’s won by seizing the moment, not ticking some Belbin Analysis or a team leader assignment on a marines assault course. This team we have now can be as together as it likes, but it collapsed like wet cardboard at Headingley last summer after an abject display by its captain. It hooked its way to a loss after another abject bowling display at Lord’s v India, and despite a turnaround which has been praised as if we’d turned into the Invincibles, we went to the West Indies and collapsed in a heap in Barbados. They are so together, they collapse in a heap in synch. I’m not saying KP makes you immune to that, but it also doesn’t mean that these batsmen are set in stone, no matter how much they say they are. If I could have a pound for all the times someone says to me “who would you drop?” then it would have paid for my shopping today. That’s not the way to look at it. It is “who are the best batsmen in the country?” If the answer is KP, then Ian Bell, Gary Ballance or Joe Root will just have to get over it.

Which is all I want. Pick our best team. Pick our best players.

Watching some of the jealous muppets on Twitter is sickening. Honestly, they act like the Katie Hopkins of the sporting world. Muppet Pringle, a man who got the sack for not reading the runes it appears, had this absolute gem, which in its brevity sums up why English team sports are absolutely Donald Ducked.

Principles over PR? What is he on about? Principles…. oh yes, they’ve worked so far. We backed a captain who took two years to make a ton, and has little or no tactical acumen over and above chuck it to Anderson and Broad and hope it works. We’ve had principles that Cook is sacrosanct in the test arena, and for a while in the ODI arena, and will work to the detriment of English cricket and hamper preparation for major events by backing him until it’s too late. Yeah, principles. Teams with principles are usually rigid, inflexible, and bound to them. Principles means authority rules, so shut the hell up.

Meanwhile, making 326 not out in a county game, I suppose, is PR. Jesus wept. Oh, and there’s a dig about tweeters too. Genius.

But it seems that our ECB would rather follow this “play the game chaps” approach, rather than countenance that they might have made an error. In part 2, which I’ll write later, I’ll go on to all that. And the unprecedented reaction I saw on Twitter after that TMS tweet. This is a fire that just will not go out. The ECB, instead of dampening it down, seem to want to put petrol on it.

Parky

LordCanisLupus32 Comments

Opening day of the County Championship and as I can confirm, it was a bit blowy and cold out there. Got to love April cricket. There were interesting performances out there – Sussex struggled early but Wright and Brown pulled them out of the abyss; Colly rolled back the years with the ball at batsman-friendly Taunton; Worcester put up a decent opening day show as they played the champions; and Brendon Taylor made a debut ton for Notts against the North London mob.

Down in division two Northants made the highest team score of the day, while Glamorgan posted two centuries in their very solid start v Leicestershire, before the Surrey Circus comes to town next weekend. Rudolph and Bragg making hay while the wind blew (so much that they played without bails according to Twitter).

Spring is here, and so is cricket. County cricket may not be to all tastes, but I have to say I love my days out when I go far more than the T20 games, while recognising this is a personal choice and not something I want to dictate on anyone!

But it was a game outside the County Championship that is going to grab all the headlines, and even now, the attitude of some to it is just off the charts churlish. Kevin Pietersen turned out for Surrey in a friendly match at Oxford. He made 170. The world went mad.

Now, I’m telling you when he got to three figures, I laughed. A lot. I felt the rage swelling inside the anti-KP mob, and knew it would burst through at some point. Let me put this to you straight, ladies and gents, we are not stupid. We do all realise the quality of opponent he was facing. But let’s also have some context here. For right or wrong, this was his first game of red ball cricket at this sort of standard (didn’t he play a Grade game pre Big-Bash) for well over a year. He was fresh, but not proper match hardened. Wickets fell around him at the start of the Surrey innings and he needed to bed in. He did all that was asked of him. Then he made hay and took the score to safety and made 170. It’s a bloody good start, but we know there’s much tougher tests ahead.

Now, keep in mind the main newspapers sent people like Lawrence Booth, Ali Martin and so forth to this game. This is the lead cricket story in all the papers. The bloke is box office, and gets the hits because he’s divisive and compelling in equal doses. As many of you know, a journalist I defended because I’ve really liked his work had a bit of a bad hair day when the news came through:

{I have deleted the part about Chris Stocks. He’s been really good to apologise, and I don’t want to settle any more scores. Fair play requires a fair acceptance.}

Derek Pringle was there, and his bizarre retweet of this beauty (to be fair, the original tweeter, when it was pointed out that if KP had pulled out at 100, Surrey would have been 220 for 6) speaks volumes.

He’s also burbled on about this:

I mean, really? You need to be there to know how he played. Sounded like a KP knock to me – a bit iffy early, a few whiffs, into a rhythm, bang. Does Mike Newell or James Whitaker need to be there to know that. Good grief.

We can see what a circus this is going to be, can’t we?

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you (and thanks to Vian for this) with this lovely quote from our beloved captain:

“It’s a big Test series we want to win. I think my position should not really be a talking point as it has been over the last 15 months. I know it is, but I’m here for the most important thing – to help England win games of cricket. I feel I’ve still the energy to do that and the experience over the last three-and-a-half years to lead this young team forward.”

I get more than one correspondent saying my attacks on Cook are tiresome. and yet I think I’m one of the more mild ones on here. But this is tone deaf. It really is. There’s backing yourself and then there’s being deluded. Alastair, you’ve not made a hundred in international cricket for two years, and no-one is confusing your captaincy with Mike Brearley’s. Please stop saying these very silly things. Thanks.

It’s been a day.

Infamy

LordCanisLupus40 Comments

In an act of self-indulgence, I am commenting on the mention of this blog in Wisden. I have a copy of the article, from the editor himself, and I’ll have to say it’s an interesting take on the blog.

One topic dominated the agenda of the English cricket media in 2014.
England’s brutal and irrevocable decision to dispense with Kevin Pietersen, and its deeply unsatisfactory aftermath, prompted serious attention from some of the blogosphere’s best writers. In terms of quantity and passion, Dmitri Old at cricketbydmitri.wordpress.com stood out.

Old wrote thousands upon thousands of words, mostly excoriating the
ECB. While at times the effect was like being repeatedly hit over the head with one of Pietersen’s bats, his blog acted as a valuable conduit for deep resentment at the ECB’s administration of English cricket. This was exemplified by their reference in a press release to people “outside cricket”, intended as a response to one of Piers Morgan’s many incursions into the saga – but which was latched on to by Old as evidence of the board’s lack of empathy with the fans.

First up, thanks to Brian Carpenter for including me in his review. It is interesting to see how your blog is viewed by those outside my usual comment client base. I actually grinned when I read the bit about “repeatedly hit over the head”, but at the time when this blogger was that mad about things, there was always gold in them there hills in which we could pick apart the arguments. I could repeat and repeat, because the press and the ECB repeatedly gave us the ammunition.

I am, by my nature, quite a modest person. I really find praise and that sort of thing awkward. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but I don’t claim credit often. But I do think this blog (along with TFT of course) has done the most to put “outside cricket” front and centre over the last year. We’ve never let it go, even if it means I’m likened to a bludgeon. Repetition hammers home the message. I don’t apologise for it. I don’t think Brian means me to either, but there are a number who tell me to let it lie. Never. Not until I get the sense that the authorities do anything more than pay lip service to what this small, noisy band of cricket tragics say. This sport does not need to become more exclusive, more insular, more arrogant – it needs, to use their bloody horrible phrase, to reconnect with the public.

However, Old didn’t take aim merely at those in authority: he also trained his sights on the traditional press, some of whom he viewed as Establishment stooges. In one or two cases, he might have had a point. But the press coverage reflected, in part, the vulnerabilities of cricket journalists, who have a symbiotic relationship with administrators and players: the administrators grant access to the players, who provide interviews and quotes. Most bloggers have no such privileges, yet this very freedom from professional dependence means they can shoot from the hip.

This is a really interesting debating point, in my eyes. Let’s go back to when KP got dropped. There is a substantial section of the England fan base that said “good”. Fair enough. I have always said they are entitled to their opinion and I’d never want to shut that down. That part of the fan base, shall we say, was more than adequately represented in the journalist corps. We pick on Paul Newman a lot here, but he’d got the inside track, by hook or by leak, and there appeared glee in reporting the end of his career. The other big beasts, such as Pringle and Selvey, and I’d say Etheridge too, had nailed their colours to the mast.

Those of us who saw a batsman top of the run charts for his team, albeit, we know, not a stellar record, being the main man to pay the price as unfair, and in my case as a fan, antagonistic, weren’t the beneficiaries of much supportive press. KP split opinions. He still does. The main conclusions to be drawn, from totally outside, was that the press had either personal grudges they weren’t prepared to go into, or they were too close to members of the establishment. Selvey was possibly the worst case, with his piece supporting Downton on his appointment, his Cricketer love letter to Andy Flower, and then his praising of Moores. It’s easy to draw the conclusion we have.

Now, I will admit, that at some times I might have gone a bit wild. But as I’ve explained to the Editor, I come from the background of a football club’s message board. Nuance and reason didn’t work. They just didn’t. You needed to put your argument forcefully. If that’s shooting from the hip. then I’ll agree.

The main gripe, as Brian would know (and he’s limited to space) was our frustration with the journalists was the TTT – Tyers Twitter Tendency – which is “we know more than you, trust us, it was the right decision”. That intimated that there was something, but the proles couldn’t know. I still don’t. Innuendo, unattributable briefing and “I’m not going to comment” isn’t going to cut it in this day and age. And yes, I went on and on and on. I still do. But it is interesting to read these views.

Where Old sometimes fell short was in failing to recognise that journalists find themselves in a different position; in any case, the press as a whole weren’t quite the Establishment mouthpieces he felt them to be. But his obsessive refusal to let sleeping dogs lie – together with an urgent, punchy delivery and a nice line in song-lyric titles – was the most distinctive aspect of the blogosphere in 2014, even if it ultimately prompted the feeling that, at some point, he would need to let go. And in February 2015, he appeared to do just that, taking his blog down, his point eloquently made.

That is very kind of Brian, and while I disagree a bit (and I see the Establishment / Press relationship a little differently now to what I did – amazing what speaking to people does) it’s fair comment. I do listen to these things, and I recognise my style is not for all. I am clearing out the spare room at the moment and came across my old school reports. For English language (and my old English teacher follows me on Twitter) I was accused of all sorts of stylistic abominations. My history teacher called my writing style brutal. Maybe I’ve always been a blogger, and my “florid prose” isn’t to all tastes. But it gets the message across.

There is no secret that I was a nobody who no-one talked to 15 months ago, and now I’m a nobody that speaks to lots more people. I don’t over-estimate any influence I have, but I do know this blog resonates, because mainly the posts are backed up by salient, well honed arguments from many similarly angry commenters. It’s a bit raucous, very angry, and yes, we get things wrong. But it has made it’s mark.

I also see this blog as an extension of How Did We Lose In Adelaide (and Brian wasn’t to know that a new blog had taken its place) so excuse me if there is any confusion over which blog is which!

The conclusion to the article on the relationship between press and blogger is also worth a read, but I think that’s for another day. But it is an important discussion that I think I have a different view on.

My thanks to Lawrence Booth for allowing me to “fisk” the article. My thanks to Brian Carpenter for the review of this and other blogs, and my thanks to all who have supported, and all who hate what we say. It keeps the petrol flowing into the engine.

PS – Do you miss the song-titles?

Furious

LordCanisLupus76 Comments

Let me kick this off with some blatant self-promotion:

The front of this bloke. Seriously. He’s wandering around giving unattributable interviews, carefully couched to convey that message he wants out there, but subtle enough to maintain his affable bloke persona. People buy it just as easily as they buy all the stuff about Pietersen. We all know it, the one about “every dressing room KP’s ever been in”. I love that one – I’ve worked for my organisation for a long time, and had ten or so roles there, and I’ll bet I moaned about every job I had at one time, every one of my colleagues at one time, and every one of my managers at one time. Even in all the jobs I loved! Christ, we had a night out last night doing it. KP’s not allowed to do it, but Cook is…. Cook can cast aspersions in his ever so polite way, and we’re supposed to forget he’s the most media-trained, reliable drone spokesman the ECB have ever put in front of a camera.

The bit that sticks in my craw is the supposed fury Alastair Cook would feel if Pietersen came back into the team. Really? As I put in the tweet above, he should thank his lucky stars he is still in the team, let alone be angry that someone else might be. You know that line that was spun a few years ago, during the series against Pakistan (the one where KP was dropped at the end of it for the ODI series) where Cook was supposedly fighting for his survival before he got his head down and made one of those gritty hundreds that you don’t really remember unless you were there (by far the most interesting thing about it was how he got past 100)? Cook’s scores in the 9 months up to that “career saving” innings were as follows:

v South Africa (you know, not bad)

15, 12, 118, 65, 55, 21, 1

v Bangladesh (take it or leave it)

173, 39, 21, 109* and then at home 7, 23, 29, 8

v Pakistan

8, 12, 17, 4, 6 then 110

Notice there – 3 centuries up to the second innings at the Oval, including a hugely important one in a win in Durban. and two on his first tour as captain to Bangladesh. Yes, he had a ropey time of it in England, but hell, he’s been doing that for a couple of years now and no-one seems to give a flying one. Compared to his current trot, this is Bradman type batting. Yet he was under threat then, and no-one is calling him out for his “fury” in the press corp now. This bloke has no right to be in the team on form, and if it is his leadership keeping him there, well seriously, god help us.

There was a fair bit of tut tutting over the last podcast of Geek and Friends, where there seemed to be a distinct softening of tone over the ECB stuff, with all the protagonists being the sort of people with the best interests of England at heart, and just being misguided and useless. I am not as hard on them as some of you were, because I see a bit where they are coming from. What I abhor is their (the ECB) stubborness. In the face of masses of evidence, in the face of wonderful modern management and statistical analysis techniques, the best gurus, the best coaches, the most money, the  best facilities, our strategy appears a simple, but rather fucking crap one. Wait long enough and Cook will score runs, Moores will be the coach we all think he can be, and you can forget your damn KP. This isn’t some nice guy scheme, it’s a self-preservation society. In the words of Madness, presumably titling their song for Graeme Swann, it’s pass the blame, and don’t blame me…..

Do not, I repeat, do not fall for this bollocks. It’s nothing more than a confession of their ineptitude and their unwillingness to change. Stick a daring move or two at the start, call everything transitional, back a teacher’s pet, and let’s see what happens. But whatever you do, don’t do anything drastic until they start aiming their arrows at us, and ridiculing us. Then we’ll think about it.

I’ve felt this for a while about Cook, and that is he plays the role of dutiful pupil really well. From the outside all the people look at the dutiful, teacher’s pet and say what a lovely boy, and I’d be so proud of him if he was my son. The other kids might not appreciate it, especially if teacher’s pet become head boy and gets a bit of power. You either stick with him, and yes, like him or you go against him and take risks. This seems the analogy to me. The thing with those sort of kids? The entitlement starts to set in. Their place is pre-ordained. Woe betide any challenger.

Yeah, I’m making this shit up. Of course I am. Sam Robson can score a test ton and have flaws in his game, but your captain can show the same flaws but because he got over them in the past he’ll do it again, so we’ll keep him. Nick Compton made two tons in successive tests, and hasn’t been seen since a couple of poor test matches got him the boot. Michael Carberry? Well he was never going to stick after a series where he took shot and shell and coped a little better than his skipper. Joe Root clearly was wasted there, what with scoring 180 once…. He got dropped three test matches after making an 80, which is the sort of score that would get our media in paroxysms of delight if their lovely little angel did it.

No. They are waiting for the next hundred, so muppets like Swann can shove it down our throats, and tell us to do one, or whatever charming turn of phrase he’ll pop up with next. If it comes in the West Indies, and it really, really should, we’ll get it full blast. As if we’ve been wrong for the last year and a half, as his form dived, his captaincy tanked and the ECB went into la-la mode.

Meanwhile, while the Cook bandwagon stalls, we have the sight of KP signing for Surrey. I’m sure I’ll wend my cheery little self down to Kennington’s Shangri-La, to watch Kumar and KP, but it’s a sideshow. Like it or not, Booth is probably not far off the mark when it comes to his comment that the aim is for KP to ply his trade with no real prospect of selection, as if by doing this these people have been so damn clever. Well, they haven’t been, because if they think this nonsense is pulling the wool over my eyes, and many on here, then their taking us for even bigger idiots than the “outside cricket” meme implied. If they are being deceitful, thinking this is ever so smart, then let them answer to those who pay the bills, who keep the game going.

I thought we might be coming to the end game, but we aren’t. Nowhere near it. Moores is allowed another tour, to no doubt create a good environment, while Cookie gets another stab at captaincy where you can bet your life that a victory in the series will be recorded as only the second series win in the Caribbean since 1967. Wait for it, you know it’s coming. I mean, this sorry outfit in the West Indies will be put on equal footing with those greats of 20 or so years. It’ll happen. The Cook Captaincy bandwagon will be off an running, and the KP sideshow will be relegated to….. well, given past form, the first cricket story in most papers.

OK. That’s my thousand or so tonight. Thanks for all the comments, hits, support etc. Life is so much more busy now that I can’t post as much, but hope that what I do put up here is doing the business.

There will be a thread on tonight’s semi-final coming up, and also a little bit of self-congratulatory news. So until then, wait for it…

I’ll leave you with this (as recommended in the comments)