It is with great sadness tonight that I have read on the Telegraph website that the Kevin Pietersen Twitter parody account has been closed.
Why? It was a bit of banter for goodness sake. Pietersen is a big enough man to withstand a bit of piss take, isn’t he? Instead of taking it, he instructs his lawyers to close the spoof Twitter account.
In my view Pietersen would have helped his wavering public image if he had just played along with the joke. Retweeting some of the tweets (which I believe he had occasionally been doing), or exchanging banter with the account.
I know it is slightly different, as it was a personal grudge, but Pietersen was more than happy to stick the boot into Nick Knight on his account, but when he gets a bit of piss take aimed at him, he instructs lawyers to get the account closed.
Absolutely ridiculous in my view, a sense of humour seems to have gone missing somewhere.
Before I go on, I would just like to stress that I have been a massive supporter of KP on this site. Feel free to check back and apart from his last outburst at Nick Knight, I doubt very much you will find any KP criticism on this site.
On the serious issue, Pietersen’s stand off with the ECB seems to be heading for a stalemate in my view. I can’t really see where there is much wriggle room for either party now and both seem to be dug in fairly deeply and are not showing much sign of backing down.
I can sympathise with Pietersen wanting to play the full IPL and maximize his contract, who wouldn’t? And for this I don’t blame him. I also don’t blame him for being annoyed about his conversations with the ECB having been leaked out, that sounds out of order to me.
Without knowing the facts, I’m forming an opinion here – and that is if Pietersen has become that unbearable and is causing that much trouble in the camp, or is that disliked by officials and/or players that they no longer want him – and as a result of this the ECB are trying to force him out by allowing these leaks, then I’d prefer it if they just booted him out instead and revealed why they have done so.
Whatever the reason, these leaks are wrong.
I also understand the ECB’s position here. They are trying to protect the 50 Over game in my view. They know that most England players regard Test cricket as the pinnacle and if they are going to dump a format, it will be 50 Over cricket. Like it or not, in my view that is why they have brought in this ruling.
I also can kind of see the ECB’s stance on treating all players the same. The point is though that all players are not the same.
There now needs to be more flexibility in the approach of the national board. Like it or not, the IPL is here to stay. Instead of fighting it, the ECB need to work with it.
It could be too late in the case of Pietersen as the ECB won’t want to be seen to be backing down to him, but for the future they have to try to work in some sort of flexibility to give the players some more licence to go and earn at the IPL, otherwise this situation is only going to continue to arise again and again.
I’m not suggesting it will be easy, as I’m sure it won’t be. There is also the possibility of other tournaments such as the Big Bash taking off as well, what do we do then? Create another window for players?
In theory there could be T20 competitions all over the world all year long taking the best players. But at the moment it is only the IPL, so surely that is all that the ECB need to deal with. Worry about the others if or when they arise.
In the meantime, if they think Pietersen is worth keeping in the side, they need to do more and sort this mess out. Stop being stubborn, and get it sorted. It’s the ECB’s job to manage situations or prevent them from occurring at all, and in this instant they have failed miserably and are not doing a good enough job of sorting it out.
But conversely, if he has become a disruptive influence and is no longer welcome or wanted in the team, then just boot him out and stop this stupid PR game.
