The decision to sack Kevin Pietersen from the England cricket team was certainly a shock, despite all the speculation that had been going on for the last few weeks. But the clamouring for more information seems to be more of a desire to get juicy gossip on how KP is a nightmare to work with and how he's been mismanaged. Frankly, the brief communication from the ECB makes this very clear - they want to rebuild the team with younger players and hit reset on the culture of the team. And that means, rightly or wrongly, that players who are reaching the final stages of their career and who think they're bigger than the team have to go. Its not something particularly revolutionary - Alex Ferguson did it on a biannual basis and Stuart Lancaster has recently successfully taken the same approach to the red rose team. And although he obviously loved playing for England, it also strikes me as being pretty decent timing for Pietersen too, as it will give him time to sample life in the IPL and Big Bash leagues while he's still got enough mileage left on the clock to really make a success of his twenty20 career. What really makes this a shock is is that the decision has been taken before a head coach has been appointed. Surely the new coach would want to give his input into how he wants to build the team? Does this mean that Peter Moore's is back in the frame? Or that Ashley Giles has already given his input as the as yet unnamed coach? Or does the new Managing Director of the ECB, Paul Downton, fancy himself as able to interfere in playing arrangements? How the new management structure works out will be very interesting...
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