Kevin Pietersen’s final days as an England player were dominated by hotel-room meetings, dismissive glances, brooding resentment and mistrust and finally open mouth shock
Andrew McGlashan06-Oct-2014Kevin Pietersen’s final days as an England player were dominated by hotel-room meetings, dismissive glances, brooding resentment and mistrust and finally open-mouth shock as he listened to the explanations for his sacking given to him by the ECB hierarchy.The final straw in his fractured relationship with Andy Flower came on the eve of the final Ashes Test in Sydney when Flower summoned Pietersen to his room to ask about the player’s rubbishing of him during an outspoken team meeting which had been convened, without the support staff, following the defeat in Melbourne.In his autobiography which is published by Sphere on Thursday, Pietersen says that he was made out to be the major back-stabber during the Melbourne meeting and writes that it was Matt Prior, another with who the relationship had fallen apart, who said “f**k Flower this is not his team” and that he was just reiterating condemnation of Flower’s intense approach he had been making for two years.Pietersen was also angered by the fact Prior, whose assertive role as vice captain often compensated for Alastair Cook’s reticence as captain, was so central to the meeting despite being dropped.He calls the decision to put the emphasis on fitness levels between the fourth and fifth Test “insane” and “a move right out of the Flower playbook” and explains how he pulled Cook aside to tell him he was wrong. “We needed to be reminded that, somewhere lost in the middle of the all the shit, we were a decent team with some decent cricketers.”Pietersen admits that during that meeting he “got into a huge argument” with Flower who told Pietersen “you really disappoint me.” He slams Flower’s talk of building a legacy which had been used in the build-up to the tour. “He had thought that by hinting that he was finished his team would say, oh no…Instead guys just thought, hey, this f****r is bailing out and he needs us to make him look good.”As Pietersen was leaving the room, he tells that Flower said to him that he hoped he scored some runs in the Test. “That lodged in my head…Actually I get what you are saying. I get the veiled threat, so why don’t you just f**k off, Flower?”Shortly after the Sydney Test finished, inside three days, the rumours of Pietersen’s future started circulating. “From the moment I left Flower’s room in Sydney, I had a sense that the inner circle were telling each other that they had to find some way to get rid of me.”A little over a month later, in another hotel room, this time across the road from Lord’s, he had his international career ended by Paul Downton, the new managing director of England cricket, who as Pietersen discovered on a Google search “was a lower-order middle-order batsman with a Test average of 20.”Downton explained his decision by saying he had never seen anyone so “disengaged” from the team as he witnessed over the three days of the Sydney Test. In his autobiography, Pietersen writes that he felt was a pre-ordained decision to end his career.”He’s been forced to admit there was no smoking gun. The only charge seems to be that Paul Downton, watching his very first Test in his brand-new job, opted to study me exclusively and concluded that I looked ‘disengaged’…I would love to know how any cricketer facing Aussie bowlers on their home turf could look ‘disinterested’.”Or does it have nothing to do with my batting? Is Downton claiming that he was watching me when I was in the outfield? Why would he do that, if not in order to gather evidence to strengthen a case that somebody must have already made to him?”He questioned why Flower, with whom Pietersen’s relationship had reached rock-bottom, was not asked “what the hell was going on”. “They knew the truth…They knew that a clique choked our team, and that Andy Flower let that clique grow like a bad weed.”Pietersen claims the ECB needed a scapegoat who was “big, boisterous and annoying…somebody who left colourful footprints on the pristine white carpets.”Pietersen reveals he had two meetings with Downton – one at Lord’s before the ECB hired a suite to deliver their final judgement. “I am glad that we are doing this in a hotel,” he writes of his thoughts on the day. “As I walked past all the desks in the ECB offices for my first meeting with Downton a few days ago, I felt like the school troublemaker on his way to the headmaster’s office.”That first meeting had left Pietersen shocked at Downton’s response to his self-assessment of his performance in the Ashes. “Look, I said, I didn’t bat well as I could. I did okay,” Pietersen recalls was his comment in the meeting to which he says “Downton said he had seen the way I had played – I hadn’t battled well. Careless. Really? I looked at him, my mouth hanging open.”Pietersen went onto ask Downton if he had watched the Melbourne Test, where he scored 71 in the first innings, but Downton said he had been flying. “No, he went on, but he saw the way I got out. Reckless. I just said, wow.”The first conversation with Downton finished with Pietersen being asked what his ambitions for the future were and he picked out the 10,000-run target which has been his oft-stated aim. Pietersen says the response from Downton was “I would have preferred you to have said, I would like to help England win matches.”When Pietersen found out the second meeting would also include James Whitaker, the national selector, and Cook he was not optimistic. “I know, though, that while Cooky is a nice man, he is also a company man. A safe pair of hands; he won’t rock the boat.”Downton then told Pietersen of the decision that “you are not going to be part of the process going forward” to which he asked “Right. So you are sacking me?” before an exchange followed where neither Whitaker or Downton appeared to want to confirm the finality of the news. “Silence,” Pietersen writes, “Whitaker nodding, Cook still looking at something really fascinating on his shoe.”Pietersen left and met Adam Wheatley, his agent, in the lobby and went to visit his lawyer. “We began making arrangements for severance. It was over. That was all I could think. Over.”Pietersen admits he made some mistakes and remarkably still holds out hope of a comeback. “I didn’t always tread wisely. I was often naïve and sometimes stupid. I was no villain, though.”Cricket is politics. Bad politics. Things change overnight. I believe that the governing body of English cricket could change; I believe it should change. I am happy for now, but I would be happy to come back. Anything can happen in cricket.”