"God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast and when I run, I feel his pleasure."
KP
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The autobiography, Kevin Pietersen, London, Sphere, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7515-5754-1
The book portrays a disturbing picture of life inside the England cricket camp. Even if we allow for a certain amount of KP spin, the evidence is quite damning.
One of Pietersen’s assertions is that there was a culture of bullying around the team, for example bowlers’ aggression towards fielders who drop a catch or misfiled. The book describes a team meeting when captain and coach said that this must stop and … “Swann and Broad both disagreed with what Flower and Strauss had been saying. They argued that fielders should apologise to the bowlers if they’ve made a mistake. They felt that bowlers were well within their rights to be angry and aggressive towards the fielders”. The truth of Pietersen’s position is supported by evidence of the bowlers’ aggression being picked up on effects mikes, out in the middle.
It would be fair to say that coach, Andy Flower and KP did not really see eye to eye. Pietersen’s assessment of the disastrous Ashes whitewash is this: “Tell me this, Andy Flower: how does a good coach bring a team to the Ashes and things just get worse and worse? How does a decent coach have a player so beaten down in the first Test that he goes home? How do you have someone else retiring from the sport after the third Test? Finally, how can you have a kid [Steven Finn] who, six months before that, was among the world’s top bowlers suddenly be told in public that he is ‘ ‘not selectable’?”
And “He had the inclination for control, but he didn’t have the personality for influence or empathy so he let the dressing room decline.” Incidentally Andy Flower is referred to as the “Mood Hoover”, because of his ability to hoover up any fun or positivity in the dressing room.
Pietersen is very critical of the handling of the Trott situation, saying that he had seen it coming and had suggested to management ways in which the player needed support.
Pietersen’s assessment of the IPL – how it helped him develop as a player – is very good. He sums up the ECB asking IPL not to clash with English season as: “like a knackered old wildebeest asking a young lion if he wouldn’t mind working a three-day week and staying at least five hundred yards away from the watering hole at any given time.”
KP writes about his Christian background. “We went to church as a family every Sunday I loved it, but may not have absorbed the religious side of things as much as my parents would have liked”. His brother is a church minister.
A very readable book, which leaves the reader frustrated that politics has deprived England of arguably their best player. Of course one has only read KP’s side of the story...