What have England actually lost from the KP ‘saga’?

Guest Blogger: Richard Smith (@parisfoodman)

Check out his food blog at  http://thealldayfeast.wordpress.com/

The patching up process between the money-hungry egotist that is Kevin Pietersen and the reactionary establishment that is the ECB now seems to be over. Pietersen is set to walk back into an England team that is in desperate need of his confrontational, aggressive run scoring in time for the India Test series in November. Both parties needed each other so badly that a swift end to Pietersen’s England hiatus was always likely, and now, presuming KP passes the ‘re-integration process’ (whatever that is) set by the ECB, England fans can expect to see the Pietermaritzburg pounder wearing the number 626 shirt for a good while longer.

The media, from the ‘it’s difficult being me’ press conference after Pietersen’s Headingley century up to the present moment, has crawled all over the story like flies on a cowpat. Will Pietersen ever play for England again? Did he reveal tactical information to the South Africans whilst sending derogatory messages about Andrew Strauss? Has this caused an unbridgeable rift between Pietersen and the rest of the England dressing room? Is it time for the ECB to wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to the IPL? What of England’s World T20 chances?

Beneath all of these endlessly debated questions, there were always simple enough answers.
Pietersen was always going to play for England again. He is England’s best batsman. Averaging just shy of 50, KP is the only one who can dismantle an opposition bowling attack and take the game away from a side in a session, with the exception of Matt Prior. The ECB wants England to win cricket matches, they’re more likely to do that with Pietersen in the team. For his part, Pietersen loves playing for England. Whether this is genuine passion for his country or a want to be adored by a cricketing public is open to debate, although I am convinced both of these factors play a role in Pietersen’s patriotism.

Did he reveal tactical information? All evidence seems to point towards no, he did not. He has admitted that he was derogatory about Andrew Strauss, but it seems unlikely that a player so keen to win against the country of his birth, would have revealed any information of value to his perceived arch-rivals. Plus, the Morne Morkel round the wicket back of a length tactic seemed to be working for the Proteas against the England captain as it was. Strauss, a totem of pragmatic common sense throughout, settled his differences with Pietersen over a beer, hatchets pretty much buried.

Did the affair cause an unbridgeable rift in the dressing room? No, because this rift was already there, all the texts did was reveal the problem to a wider audience. A cocktail of jealousy, Pietersen’s abrasive personality and the seeming ‘cliqueyness’ of some in the Test team meant that the Strauss/Flower regime was showing cracks long before August 2012. When a side talks so continually  of ‘team unity’ and ‘togetherness’ being part of their success, one wonders whether, during their ODI World Cup embarrassment and hammerings versus Pakistan, the team ethic was already being eroded.

The ECB has refused to smell the coffee, and has merely buried the IPL issue for a couple more years. Pietersen wished to play a full IPL, which would require him to miss England’s two May Test matches against New Zealand in 2013. In a recent interview with The Cricketer magazine, Pietersen states he could earn three times as much from a full season in the IPL than by fulfilling his central contractual obligations with England. Who can blame a man with a young family for wanting to cash in on this payday, and soak up the adulation of a Delhi crowd? In life, if you don’t ask, you generally don’t get. Pietersen had nothing to lose by asking for what he wanted, and the rebuff has cost Pietersen nothing financially. The ECB, head now firmly in the sand, has sidestepped the problem momentarily. That is, until a few years down the line, when an Eoin Morgan, Stuart Broad, Jonny Bairstow, or Steven Finn is presented with a similarly tempting offer to spend May in India. The ECB has missed a golden opportunity to revamp a schedule which in recent years has produced sub-standard Test cricket against weakened opposition who wished they were in Bangalore and not Birmingham. Why can’t England play three Tests in June, ODI and T20 triangular series between the early and late summer opponents in July, and four Tests in August and early September? The 2005 Ashes series finished on 12th September, which shows how late the English Test summer could go if it was released from dreary one day series, played on freezing northern nights under lights. The ECB also needs to realise that, unless a dialogue is opened with the IPL, there is nothing to stop the T20 leviathan encroaching further on the English summer. Even the monsoon season hasn’t stopped sub-continental boards organising matches in the traditional English summer months. The 2010 IPL ended on 25th April, the 2012 edition ended on 27th May, there is nothing to stop it spreading later and later into the year unless the ECB embraces and accepts the IPL and all its glitzy materialism, and reaches some sort of accord with it.

England’s T20 chances? This is the one area in which the ‘KP saga’ has had an obvious negative effect. Pietersen would be in most people’s T20 World XIs, remains the second highest run getter in T20i history, and so inevitably a green and inexperienced English batting line up missed his talents, crashing out in the Super Eight phase of the tournament. In the bigger picture, this is a disappointment yes, but has allowed others, such as Luke Wright, to develop their games on the international stage.

The KP Saga, now all but resolved, has changed little in English cricket, and will in time become a footnote to the story of England’s toppling from the number one status, the retirement one of England’s finest captains, and the announcement of Hashim Amla as a great, not merely a very good, player. The text saga did not cause English disharmony or South African ascendancy, but was a result of these things. Now the dust is rapidly settling, let’s forget about it and be thankful that the England team are in a better position to win cricket matches again. The ECB could have swallowed their pride and streamlined an English summer that made room for the IPL and made for better cricket in better weather. Let’s just hope that the Pietersen IPL situation is not a precursor for things to come, in which the England Test team becomes a sideshow, in the same way that the West Indian cricket team has been ravaged by player defections and an incompetent cricket board.