From WG Grace to Kevin Pietersen: A matter of trust?

From W G Grace to Kevin Pietersen. A matter of trust?

Kevin Pietersen is not to be part of the England squad for limited over matches which the team are due to play before the next home Test series starts in the late Spring and neither apparently will he play for England ever again. He is in his 30s and has had injury problems so this may well be the case even if there is regime change at the ECB

I have no inside information about this, I am merely an England cricket fan and attender at games for the last 50 years or so.

It seems to me that Pietersen while it would seem a rather awkward person [aren’t we all?]has also got a rather good record as an England player. If he is no longer regarded as such then it is as much a crisis for the management of England cricket as it is for him. Yet the ECB appears in total denial.

Clearly both sides are restrained in respect of what they can currently say by legal agreement, common in the field of employment but poorly understood outside it. Why the ECB felt the need to clarify its earlier statement on the matter is unclear. Certainly there was a media storm but nothing more detailed could be said and indeed was not said.

Instead the ECB have declared that Pietersen has lost trust and as anyone who deals with dismissals from employment as I do knows, that is a really difficult argument to counter. Pietersen could say that he can be trusted in future, but the ECB will simply say that they don’t do so.

Beyond that a reality and really rather large problem is that cricket, and perhaps English cricket above all, is beset by the neo-liberal mindset of the day, performance management. You need only listen to an ECB administrator for a short while and the language they use to grasp the point.

There is no room for the maverick, it is command and control. W G Grace would not get in the team these days. He was certainly someone who by all accounts was not always to be trusted

Of course much sport follows a similar pattern and in a world when commercial sponsorship and considerable money is at stake perhaps that is no surprise. It is not in my view however a cause for either acceptance or celebration and there is a sense in which top players, not just in cricket but in other sports, can be seen as overpaid. Here again though sport rather echoes the rest of society where small numbers of ‘top’ people are paid excessive amounts.

The current cricket culture is entirely unforgiving of errors or mistakes- even very small ones on or off the pitch- and it is obsessed by how a player has performed not in the past, or even how they could do in future, but at the moment, their last innings. This is to be relentlessly analysed and dissected for errors which must be corrected. The errors are not just about play on the field but mindset off it

Top ranking cricketers, as other sports stars, are professionals so we should expect them to be looking at ways to improve their performance and play better over time. However they are also human. From time to time other matters may intrude and only machines can perform to a consistent standard all the time [until they go wrong].

By media accounts Kevin Pietersen was actually very diligent at training and looking to improve his game even if loose shots on the pitch could infuriate. So he actually played the performance game but such is its ultimately undefinable nature, he is still out

We need a culture in cricket that is less unforgiving of the occasional bad shot, or poor spell of bowling and an appreciation of what a particular cricketer can do, and might be hoped to do at a key moment in a particular match. It is not what Pietersen might or might not to do from time to time [and be annoying in the process]. It is about what he can do and has been known to do.

That is not the view the ECB has taken but after the debacle of the Winter’s Ashes series if Kevin Pietersen, the most successful batsman has to go, and Andy Flower the coach is moving on, it is more than time for Giles Clarke to admit his own error strewn efforts and depart as well.

Of course one would not expect to see that happen immediately. However many are annoyed and perturbed at the way the Pietersen affair has been handled, even perhaps many who might agree the ECB has a point about him. If there is not put in place a changing of the guard at the ECB that could find its way into a deeper crisis in English cricket. That is not what is needed now.