KP decision - gossip seeking and meddling

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...

Reaching the masses

Andrew Murfett, writing in the Guardian, wrote about the big bash growing the second largest TV audience in Australia during their summer. Capitalising on this traditionally low season for TV programming and the TV friendly scheduling which is possible with Twenty20 cricket, big bash cricket has reached a level of exposure that few imagined were possible. Lessons could be learnt by the ECB - as the first country to introduce Twenty20 cricket, things feel like they've been stagnating. While it is still a vital source of income and crowds for county cricket, it feel like the UK version lacks the glamour of the IPL or Big Bash cricket. Granted, it is never going to be as big as the IPL, but as a way to create grass routes interest in the game, surely a free-to-air TV agreement would allow the sport to reach out to a much broader audience and cement its place in the British summer, along with Wimbledon and test match cricket. Sadly, I suspect that a more realistic outcome is that Twenty20 cricket will become a new battlefield between BT Sport and Sky competing for access and the ECB is likely to opt for the greater revenue goals available. The only hope then, is that one of the pay TV giants (most likely the new kid on the block, BT Sport) decide to cooperate with a free-to-view partner to allow greater exposure, sharing live games as well as highlights. And as the England team has struggled terribly over the last few months (including a new heartbreaking story today), the ECB could do well to diversify their focus on a strong national team as a way to drive interest in the game...

International selection and availability top of the agenda

It doesn't seem to matter what the sport is - there are selection controversies affecting national coaches across the country. So let's try to break it down into manageable chunks:

Rugby

This most surprising of all twists and turns of the past week comes from Rugby Union, where former England coach Andy Farrell has resigned from Saracens. Having earlier turned down a permanent coaching post with England in order to remain with Saracens, there seems to have been a change of heart and he will now serve out the rest of his time with Saracens. With the era of intrigue at the RFU seemingly, hopefully, at an end (although it appears Martyn Thomas is continually trying to drag the RFU back to the bad old days as he is considering issuing a writ against his former employees), there has also been no suggestion that Andy Farrell has been recently courted by the England camp to review his decision. Only time will tell if his intention is to return to the international fold (did the end of this season with Saracens fail to live up to the excitement of being involved with the England team?) - but he would certainly make an impressive appointment to join England as defensive coach (and Stuart Lancaster has indicated he'd be happy to have Farrell join his team), freeing up Mike Catt to take on a specialist attacking role.

Football

Meanwhile, the England football team's preparation ahead of Euro 2012 has ignited the nation's press into action - moving swiftly from mild disinterest in a team with modest ambitions to full scale scandal alert following Roy Hodgson's failure to invite Rio Ferdinand and Micah Richards up to the national squad following the injury which sidelined Gary Cahill. The Rio Ferdinand situation is a real can of worms and the only surprise is that it took this long for it to blow up into a full media frenzy. It appears that Hodgson decided that he could only take one of them to Krakow for the tournament as the alternative would be to have a divided camp which would make a successful tournament nigh on impossible. He then made the decision to pick Terry as the player in better form and, having made this decision, is unable now to select Ferdinand barring an injury to Terry himself. The explanation given that his non-selection was therefore a half-truth, as he would have been selected if he had been judged to be playing better than Terry. And for all the rights and wrongs of this course of action, at least it has the advantage of limiting the number of senior players travelling to the tournament and allowing a few younger players to get some experience of losing playing on the international stage. However, the final comment should go to Rio himself - he can certainly be applauded for (eventually) backing the team despite his omission.

The Micah Richards plot line is also a complicated one. Having first apparently turned down the opportunity to join the standby list in a fit of pique, it was then reported that he asked not to be included because he was so devastated at having been left out. It seems a strange reaction to say the least (particularly given the likelihood of injuries giving the standby list players a fairly strong chance of getting into the squad) and one hopes that in the future players take heed from this episode and always keep themselves open for national selection - short of injury concerns, surely any opportunity to join the national squad should be accepted regardless of perceived snubs or disappointments?

Cricket

And finally to cricket - the England squad has suffered a mixture of players disappointed at being rested by management against their wishes and another choosing to rest himself against the wishes of management. While the decision to rest Jimmy Anderson and possibly Stuart Broad seems a wise one given the amount of cricket that is stacked up ahead of them, it is also encouraging to see how hungry both players are to get caps and wickets for England. However, it's likely that this disappointment will pass once they're (almost certainly) reinstated to the team for the South Africa tests. And although some fans may be disappointed not to see the best available team for England play at Edgbaston, at least they will be hardly short changed with some superb replacements available and, in the very worse case, a lower standard performance should, all other things being equal, make for a closer match.

Meanwhile, Kevin Pietersen has retired from all short forms of cricket at international level, citing the need to preserve his fitness to compete in the Test side. Now while he has had a number of injuries affect his career, he appears to be in good shape and doesn't suffer the pressures on the body experienced by fast bowlers to require such caution at the age of 31. However, it would be unfair to label it as being purely financially motivated to enable him to be free to play in the IPL, rather, I would imagine, it is a decision based on the desire to perform more regularly on what is perceived as the biggest, most prestigious, stages - that is Test cricket for England and international Twenty20 tournaments such as the IPL.

It seems that the most obvious conclusion from these developments is that the one day format is under increasing pressure - if there was a focus purely on Twenty20 and Test cricket, this would lower the demands put on players in terms of volume of cricket and allow players to concentrate on the most popular (and, admittedly, lucrative) forms of the game.