We Need to Talk About Kevin

Do we? Yes, Wickman thinks we do. Despite a second team match report there's not much to read today after a washout weekend.

For the last week every rain break filling presenter, the execrable Cricket Writers on TV (that's a terrible show, it really is) and every columnist worth their salt has had a pop at the ECB and KP. This amateur writer thinks that opinion is divided with the wearied salaried hacks just about on the side of the ECB but with a sizeable mass of humanity on KP’s side. And Piers Morgan. Who is beginning to get boring.

The reason? Having dumped KP from the team, the ECB’s lawyers then caused the public relations cock up of the decade by insisting that, in these days where the commentariat includes every man and woman with a Twitter account, no one directly involved could talk about it. Leaving everyone BUT those who were directly involved in it to be able to talk about it. Subject to libel laws, naturally.

And then out comes the MD of England cricket, Paul Downton, and talks about it. On a long radio segment with the questions asked by Aggers. If you have listened to it, Downton does a competent job of trying to explain what lead him – it was him – to the decision to get rid of KP.

He says that when he sounded people out (players, coaches and whoever else he spoke to) they said that KP was a problem. Not THE problem. THE problem was that the team had collectively gone in the head. But A problem. There were rumours of spats and fights, team meetings gone awry, a lack of heart.

It probably boils down to this. So fresh in post that he’s not officially in post, Downtown turns up down under to have a look at what’s going on. He finds a team totally at rock bottom. Players wondering where the next wicket or run is coming from, top bat returned home ill, top spinner given up, Captain on the edge, coaching staff out of ideas (with head coach realising that he’s going to have to fall on his sword) and the Aussie media cock-a-hoop.

It’s the dark before the dawn.

Downton knows he has to do something about this. No one is going to accept that there’s nothing he can do. There’s no point commissioning a review and sitting back while folk have a pop at the process and then deride any recommendations. He knows that the fastest way out of this is to get a new coach in, change the personnel a bit and get some results on the pitch. Probably targeting the Test series against Sri Lanka when greenish pitches and alien conditions could sneak England a series win.

Downton is from the real, hard commercial world (having worked in the City) albeit with some playing pedigree. While he knows the game moves slowly, he also knows that the in the corporate world – and especially in the harsh end of the City – heads have to roll and you have to shake the tree to show that you are doing something.

So he looks around for people to fire, to show tangible change.

He probably can’t fire the coach. The coach has to agree with him that is time to go. Luckily he does. Frankly – who wouldn’t agree that Flower had to go, including Flower. The team were on the turn like rotten meat back in the second half of the English season.

Cook really hadn’t established the sort of hold over the side that he really needed to. Communication with players had started to show rifts in planning. Compton was dropped in the middle of the Summer for batting a bit slowly. That decision looked poor when Trott returned home a couple of months later. Carberry took to the press to bemoan the way that he was treated. Swann thought it okay to pull up stumps mid tour. Finn was suddenly unpickable. To the outside observer there are various other players still turning out for England whose body language screams “I’ll be retiring soon”.

In the middle of it all you had KP. He had an average tour at best. Injured, distrusted and perhaps the least needful of an England contract of all the team members, he made himself a target for action. Without a match turning or saving contribution anywhere in the series he provided something that no one else did. Headlines for the arriving MD hoping to set his stamp on proceedings.

Get rid of KP, talk up the next generation and move on and you have a chance of showing that you have had a major impact. In jettisoning Ashley Giles too – I’m not sure many England fans really believed that Spanish royalty was the answer post Ashes and Dutch debacle – you have a winning formula (whatever you might think of Moores).

For those of us bemoaning KP’s exit there are some stark realities. KP’s real magic came in the shorter form of the game largely. His reverse sweeps, switch hits and left handed slogs – while they crept into some of his Test innings – were forged in the short form. But pre StraussTextGate KP was trying to give up 50 over cricket so that he could play IPL and Test cricket. To become England’s Chris Gayle. He did play some stunning Test innings and some startlingly unorthodox shots and he could bully like no other English bat for a generation. He did clear bars. But he did do disengagement too well. Too often even his biggest fans wondered if he really gave a shit as he tugged off his helmet and ran his hand through his hair with that slightly mincey walk back to the dressing room.

And as we all know, when your gun bat gets out and doesn’t look as if he gives a damn, it sends a terrible message.

So back to Downton. He goes round the team and the one thing that the majority of bewildered players, coaches and hangers on can agree on is that there’s something not quite right about KP. He’s not making an unarguable case for selection any more. He doesn’t look as if he gives a shit. He’s wealthy enough to pick and choose. He’s not really a team player. He’s opinionated and doesn’t always give the impression he’s fully on board. Not that there was much else to talk positively about by the way. But KP is the one thing that seems unarguably wrong.

And then there’s this unavoidable feeling that the management had given up trying to keep KP onside. Cook had had a go. There had been a rapprochement with the cabal of senior, or at least more established and vocal players (Anderson, Swann, Prior, Bresnan) and the others (Trott, Bell and the younger mob) weren’t loud enough or opinionated enough to weigh in one way or another. Flower didn’t seem to care much for the man and Giles hadn’t selected KP for a while. Who knows about the rest of the management? Can’t imagine there was much love lost. So that was it.

A collective “We’ve tried” was probably the end of it.

And, frankly, it was Downton’s job to act on that. If there was no longer the will to try to manage KP, then Downton had no option but to can him. Personally I think that’s a damn shame – that there’s not the will to try. That for this summer at least we’ll have no chance to revel in the sort of innings that a flawed genius can play for a country and divide the critics, the public and even his own team. But it is time for him to go if can no longer be accommodated for the good of the team.

That’s not to say that this writer won’t miss KP. His innings were like highlight reels in real time. He did things that some of us can’t even dream of. From those first one day innings in South Africa where he took on the baying mob, to hoisting McGrath into the Lords pavilion, almost losing the Ashes at the Oval and then winning them, slogging Murali into the Oval stands left handed… oh it was amazing to watch.

But it’s over. And we need to get on with it. We need to talk about Kevin. And we’ll need to talk about Kevin until one of the new breed takes over his mantle. Because that’s what cricket is about. Looking for the next genius.