Why KP got the rough end of the stick

It’s the great comedy that was never made: Laurel and Hardy go looking for a job and find themselves running the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Oh the hilarity as the pair restructure English cricket; oh the chaos as the boys try to regulate the movement of players; oh the laughs as they arrange a new champions league without knowing the rules, the location, the teams or the date. Except it’s not a film; it’s reality.

Even at this very moment at Lord’s, Hugh Morris (Managing Director – England cricket) is probably turning around very fast with a ladder sending John Carr (Director – England Cricket Operations) into the path of Alan Fordham (Head of Cricket Operations) who plants a cake into the face of David Graveney (Performance Manager).

Meanwhile the chief executive, David Collier (the James Finlayson of the ECB) looks on scowling. Mike Gatting (Managing Director, Cricket Partnerships) is out at lunch. But, even by the slapstick standards of the ECB, the last few weeks have been embarrassing. For, as Oscar Wilde so nearly put it: to lose one senior figure in the England set-up is unfortunate; to lose two is careless.

It’s hard to work out how it came to  this. How both captain and coach had to go. OK, results have been poor, but there’s little new in that. And it’s not as if they’ve replaced the previous regime with a sure thing. Instead, they’ve replaced one man who oversaw a 5-0 ODI series loss (against India) with one (Andrew Strauss) who oversaw a 5-0 series loss against Sri Lanka. Hard to be dizzy with confidence, isn’t it?

I’m not sure that Kevin Pietersen has done much wrong. If he felt that Peter Moores was no good, he was absolutely right to bring that to the attention of the ECB management. They must have agreed with him, up to a point, or they would have stuck with the coach. So why did Pietersen have to go?

As I understand it, it is not true that the players were particularly anti-Pietersen or Moores. Most of them were simply uneasy at being drawn into the row. The more vehement criticism came from the support staff. Several of them felt that Pietersen had been disloyal.

They felt he had betrayed Moores’ trust. Perhaps there’s an element of truth in that. It was actually Moores who was given the responsibility to pick the captain in the summer of 2008 and he chose Pietersen. They had a long conversation at the time and, despite some differences, agreed to work together for the good of the team. It is felt by some in the England camp that Pietersen had been trying to get rid of Moores ever since.

But this isn’t a club. It’s elite sport. If a guy can’t cut it, he has to go. If Pietersen really felt that Moores wasn’t the man to take England forward, he wasn’t just right to speak out, it was his duty.

And, for a man who is routinely described as arrogant and selfish, it was a particularly selfless act from Pietersen. Heroic, even. He risked his own position because he believed something needed to be done. And after seeing England’s clueless performance in Antigua, it’s hard to disagree.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by Pietersen’s actions. This is the man who skipped down the wicket to Glenn McGrath; the man who switch-hit Murali for six in a Test; the man whose first Test-century was an Ashes-clinching innings that included seven sixes. He is not the sort to sit on his hands.

There’s a lot of tosh talked about ‘character’ in cricket. It’s not necessary for everyone in dressing room to spend their spare time bandaging the knees of puppies and helping the elderly across the road. If it were, then Nelson Mandela would take the new ball for South Africa and Mother Teresa would have been a fixture in the Indian middle order.

The England team needs fighters. Players who don’t flinch when the going gets tough. Who won’t back down. Pietersen is just such a character. And unless he’s been caught eating babies or dabbling in chemical warfare, he is the only natural choice as captain.
So let’s come back to the original question: why did he gave to go?

Well, because he rocked the boat. And, in the cosy world of the ECB there is no greater crime. The boat needed a good rock, of course, but the ECB Board were indignant that anyone should make demands of them.Even if he was right.

True, there is a history of conflict behind Pietersen. But there’s also a history of excellence. English cricket – so mired in mediocrity and conformity – simply could not cope with his passion, his will to win and his drive. Shame.

Does minor counties cricket retain any relevance? It was a thought that struck me while at Lord’s to attend the Minor Counties Cricket Association AGM. Conventional wisdom tells us that the influence of the minor counties is much diminished. County boards have, we are told, largely replaced the developmental role of the minor county clubs and an improved scouting system from the first-class counties has ensured that few decent players slip through the net.

Minor counties cricket has, therefore, become viewed as a recreational form of the game. It has become almost impossible to follow in newspapers and, as a consequence, its relevance – and its funding – hang by a thread.

And yet, there is evidence that suggests the minor counties provide a valuable role in the development of professional cricketers. In recent issues of Spin, fine county players such as Charlie Shreck and Martin Saggers have spoken about their struggles to break into first-class cricket. Both owe much to the minor counties.

Some who started in the minor counties game – such as Chris Read, Andrew Strauss, Monty Panesar, Graeme Swann and Jon Lewis – would have gone on to ‘make it’ anyway. But others – Chris Schofield, Peter Trego and Alan Richardson, for example – have been grateful for the rehabilitating effect of the minor counties, after dropping out of the professional game. Many good players would have been lost to cricket without a thriving minor county programme.

It wasn’t so long ago (1991) that Durham CCC were playing in the minor counties championship. Yet, less than two decades later, they are county champions and producing a remarkable number of high-quality fast bowlers. If Durham can do it, why can’t the others?

Yet, as things stand, the minor counties have to negotiate a new deal with the ECB within months. This will determine the amount of money each minor county receives – it currently stands at just £30,000 per year (compared to the £1.6m per first-class county) – and their responsibilities. The fear is that they will be sidelined further. The abyss looms. It would be a mistake to further erode their influence.

At their best, the minor counties can reach out to swathes of the UK that the first-class counties can’t hope to cover. Furthermore, the minor counties offer opportunities for late developers and a second chance for others. Most cricket boards, it should be noted, do not field representative teams after the age of 17. Are we really sure that all decent players have developed by then?

A short-cut to prosperity would come in a return to games against first-class counties: an FA Cup of cricket in a Twenty20 format. I’ve never met a spectator who didn’t like that idea.

In the meantime, however, it’s imperative the ECB don’t further erode the minor counties’ influence. They perform a valuable role and their survival is crucial.