The fake Kevin Pietersen account was being written by one of Stuart Broad’s mates

1. If it’s a choice between those two, I’d rather they drop Broad.

2. Broad must have known about the fake account for sure. What a shitty thing to do.

3. Enough with the soap opera! Let’s get on with some cricket!

   1. Well said, either boot him out or let him back into the fold and let him prove with actions that he is contrite and meant it when he said sorry. But either way let’s get back to concentrating on cricket again.

4. Let’s just stop for a second and think about this. A spoof Kevin Pietersen Twitter page was set up by a man calling himself Bails the Badger.

   Isn’t there a Test series going on? Come on, people. Chuffing hell.

5. This is what happens when you let young people get involved with sport. 35 should be the minimum age for representing your country at anything.

   But just to discuss cricket for a moment, doesn’t KP’s absence make our batting look thin and crispy? With four high scoring batsmen in the team (KP, Cook, Trott, Bell) there was just enough scope to blood a new chap at #6 AND carry the captain along for the ride. Now there is not. Strauss needs a big score, and he needs it quickly.

   1. There’s an ‘all-eggs-in-one-basket’ downside to England’s consistency when selecting batsmen.

      It’s great that England batsmen get plenty of experience these days, because experienced batsmen are generally more reliable. However, if a couple are missing, it’s a big step down to the second tier.

   2. Now this is a policy I can get behind. Strauss needs to stay in the team forever.

      I really don’t like the idea of being older than everyone in the England cricket team.

6. A friend of mine was involved in this debacle

   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/4210285/Schoolgirls-suspended-over-Facebook-abuse.html

   Anyone else see parallels?

   1. It seems fairly safe to assume that the account was at the very least informed by the views of at least one England cricketer.

      Kev is a bit humourless and doesn’t build proper relationships easily, but we’ve sympathy for him for having to spend so much time in an environment where that kind of thing could happen.

   2. Although the twitter account wasn’t slagging off a team mate to the opposition during a match, it’s still further damaging to team harmony.

      I do believe Pietersen should have treated the account with a bit more humour, and even though it will be never be proven (unless his mate grasses him up, which is unlikely), Broad was very unprofessional to be involved in this – which let’s be honest, is what most of us suspect and believe.

7. I am Spartacus.

   1. You are? Okay, we’ll execute you then.

8. Firstly, Kevin Pietersen is a pillock.

   But secondly, isn’t the job of a captain / coach to take disparate personalities and meld them into a team? Not to force them out when it gets tough? In club sports there is this maxim that no man is bigger than the team, but that’s very easy to say when you can just buy another superstar off the shelf. International sport is different – you get what you get. Mike Brearley took Boycott and Gower and Botham and Willey and Willis and created an environment where these vastly different personalities could all perform to their best. Kim Hughes failed to do that, but there was no suggestion that the Aussies would have been better off kicking out the disruptive Lilley and Marsh.

   Thirdly, Kevin Pietersen remains a pillock. I’m not trying to defend him, just to say that the failure here goes beyond just KP and his personality.

   1. Step one would have been to recognise that Kevin Pietersen becomes more and more of a pillock if you allow him to grow alienated.

   2. Very well put Bert. I suspect you could go through a similar cycle starting with “Stuart Broad is an Arse”.
      The whole thing is just so demeaningly childish.

   3. I agree Bert, Australia didn’t try and force Shane Warne out because he didn’t get on with – or rate – John Buchanan, and I’m sure other players in a team of strong character like that didn’t get on too well either.

      It’s also ECB’s job to manage situations, don’t really see that they have done that.

      Pietersen is a berk and is far from innocent, but he’s not the only one.

9. Firstly, Piers Morgan is a pillock

10. And another thing. Why isn’t this a Gate yet? Cricinfo is reporting the whole affair under the line “England’s Pietersen Dilemma”. How much more serious does it have to get before it becomes a Gate?

    1. I saw it described earlier as a “brouhaha”.

    2. I hope Ed Cowan gets involved in a scandal involving baby formula.

    3. Brouhahagate?

    4. Gate is an American thing.

    5. KP to start with, now add Broad, Swann and Hales. They’ve all acted like children it seems, and I would like to think would all get treated the same way, by being barred from the team.

       So, one more player involved would make it Five Barred Gate.

       Yesssssss.

    6. Bloody Nottinghamshire. I always knew they were no good. It was them that upset KP first time around, too. Just eliminate that county and all will be well (I mean in a cricket sense, but we could just wipe it off the map entirely and we’d all be better off).

11. Breaking news – Pietersen will not play for Surrey next year.

    Breaking views – They are better off without him.

12. I was sympathetic to KP a bit (esp the argument that conversation between him and the ECB have been leaked) UNTIL I heard Piers Morgan was supporting him. You are judged by your friends. Piers is the lowest of the low.

    This standard also reinforces the impression of Broad as a pillock with his confirmation of the fake twitter author being his friend.

13. This doesn’t sound like just a case of “managing” a difficult player. Leaking KP’s private communications with the ECB looked like an attempt to discredit him publicly, as does the public announcement that he sent derogatory texts about Strauss and Flower. Having a poor personal opinion of those in charge is hardly destructive of team unity. And KP did it privately (contrast it with Warne, who very publicly expressed his feelings about Buchanan).

    If the ECB was really interested in preserving team unity, all of these things could have, and should have, been handled behind closed doors. However asinine KP might have been, it is the ECB who has been guilty of escalating this into a media war – a classic tactic against a popular opponent. There’s some serious bad faith going on here.

    1. That sounds good in theory, but there’s no way in hell ECB could’ve dropped him without offering an explanation to the public. The media would’ve hounded them, and frankly, that would have been even more disastrous, IMHO.

    2. Thats fair, but the explanation seems concocted. They knew he had sent the texts, and what was offered to KP was not the chance to apologize or explain, but the chance to deny – something he could not do without risking exposure as a liar.

       In other words, reconciliation was never going to be given a chance, despite KP handing the ECB a fair shot at it with his public apology.

14. And contrast the ECB’s stance on KP with the immediate public exoneration handed to Broad by Morris. There is something very deliberate about the ECB’s actions, and it seems very anti-KP.

15. This is all a bit silly really, isn’t it?

16. KP lost my respect when he didn’t immediately respond to Piers Morgan’s intervention by in some form publicly expressing a desire to punch him in the face.

17. Well it was certainly written by one of Stuart Broad’s mates, but now Broady has denied such involvment. Even the man who caused the controversy, Richard Bailey, has claimed that he worked alone.

    Is it just that KP’s South African or does everyone of his team-mates hate him? I mean, Swanny criticized Kevin in his book, and others have had their problems too.

18. My “I am Spartacus” moment on this thread this morning did not go entirely according to plan.

    Thank YOU, daneel.

    1. Happy to oblige!

    2. I’m Spartacus(if that helps)

19. Yesterday I interviewed a lady – nothing to do with cricket – whose Twitter name is @IAMKP

    Coincidence?

20. I’m Spartacus and so is my wife.

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