Kevin Pietersen, for certain employees of the England and Wales Cricket Board, seems akin to one of those oh-so-hilarious relighting candles on a birthday cake. The harder they try to blow him out, the more daft they look.
The national selector James Whitaker was the latest to step up to the gateau during Wednesday’s announcement of the Test squad for next month’s tour to the Caribbean, huffing and puffing in the face of a Paxmanesque grilling from the BBC’s Pat Murphy as he sought to distance himself from the apparently more relaxed stance towards the batsman being demonstrated by the incoming chairman, Colin Graves.
In the exchange Whitaker maintained, as he always has, that “Kevin isn’t part of our plans” while repeating three times that everyone – meaning Graves – is “entitled to their opinion”. He insisted his new boss had not spoken to him on the subject, before later going on to state he had. He then finally finished with the assertion that, on all matters of selection, the new head of English cricket has “so far” given him his backing.
Why then, as it later emerged in the Guardian, has Graves recently engaged in dialogue with Pietersen over the telephone? It could be a simple extension of courtesy, of course. The self-made-millionaire founder of the Costcutter supermarket chain has, after all, insisted publicly that his five-year reign in charge of English cricket, which begins in May, will be an “open and transparent” one.
But if truly in agreement with Whitaker over the future plans for selection, what exactly does Graves seek to benefit from agreeing to meet Pietersen face-to-face after his current spell as a pundit at the Cricket World Cup?
Would it not have been simpler to politely inform the batsman that his early English summer would still be better served honouring a contract to play for Sunrisers in the Indian Premier League?
Instead, emboldened by the initial exchange and the promise of a further pow-wow, Pietersen has now sought a route out of that deal in order to play county cricket for Surrey, where he hopes an avalanche of runs, albeit in Division Two, could capitalise on any failings by the Test team and force the selectors into a rethink.
Some have theorised that Pietersen was always looking to skip the IPL after a personally disappointing £205,000 sale price at the auction on 16 February. Just one solitary hand went up when his name went under the hammer in Bangalore and not before the most pregnant of pauses. Two weeks later he appeared quick to leap on Graves’ initial door-opening comments before fully establishing the facts for himself in private. So what if the Yorkshireman was simply caught off guard? Mischief and martyrdom – along with innings of breathtaking skill – are hallmarks of Pietersen’s cricketing career, after all.
But that possibility aside, the news that the ECB chairman-in-waiting, unlike his predecessor, Giles Clarke, is now ready to meet face-to-face with the man who has spent 13 months outside English cricket is hardly a ringing endorsement for the path English cricket has trod since his removal at the Danubius Hotel next to Lord’s. Whitaker and the managing director, Paul Downton, must surely be twitchy. Both have been strident in their position that there is no way back for the 34-year-old while they are running the show. Their stock, along with the head coach, Peter Moores, is hardly sky-high at present, though, after that most miserable of World Cup campaigns in which England arrived in Australia with low expectations and still conspired to fall short of them.
Downton, in particular, looks exposed. It should be stated that his brief as managing director, a role created and subsequently occupied by the popular Hugh Morris in 2007, is far more wide-ranging than simply keeping a steady hand on the tiller of the senior men’s side. But in public relations, a small but crucial part of it, he has experienced something of a shocker since being appointed in October 2013. The lowest moment came when he was forced to make a public apology to Pietersen for breaking the terms of the ECB’s confidentiality agreement. His description of Moores as the “outstanding coach of his generation” is a line that continues to haunt the pair of them to this day.
Downton and Moores met the new ECB chief executive, Tom Harrison, on Tuesday to discuss the World Cup campaign and managed to avoid being dropped into the shark-pool. For how long, given Graves has not officially taken up his role as chairman – despite countless meetings and briefings to date – remains to be seen. In talking to Pietersen, is Graves actually looking to bring a player back into English cricket should their replacements deem his services to be of interest? Or is he simply engaging with a former Test great out of politeness and respect?
Given the divisive nature of all things Pietersen, the latter path would appear an awful lot of bother to go to when a simple “thanks but no thanks” would have sufficed. And so, as with Graves’ plans for the overall structure of the English game, it is hard to escape the sense that change is very much in the air.
