Keep Pietersen, drop Strauss

When the England and Wales Cricket Board was set up in the late 1990s, following a process that sought to fully professionalise the structure of the England cricket team, a 10-year plan was put into place. It had two simple objectives. By the end of the decade, England were to become both the number one Test team in the world… and win the World Cup. Eventually, after a little longer than 10 years, target one was achieved. The latter goal has never come close, unless you count the Twenty20 version. Anyway, the real point is this: after the axing of Kevin Pietersen both from the critical final Test against South Africa at Lord’s and the World Twenty20 set-up this coming autumn, are we to assume that excellence is no longer the primary aim? Virtually every argument and counter-argument has been put forward in assessing the dramatic fall from grace of KP, his social exclusion within the squad, what he may or may not have revealed to the South Africans about Andrew Strauss, and so on, ad infinitum. There are those who stoically support Pietersen, and those who side with the establishment, and thus get behind Strauss. It is only fair to respect their arguments and consider both sides of the debate. [caption id=“attachment_425697” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  England’s Anderson, Pietersen and Strauss prepare for a team photograph before a training session ahead of Thursday’s first cricket test match against South Africa at the Oval cricket ground in London. Reuters[/caption] But, to come back to the original issue, wherever possible England’s management and selectors should be putting forward the best 11 cricketers in the land to wear the Three-Lions-and-crown emblem. They can’t all be jolly good chaps who smile for the cameras and then disappear into the nets for three hours, before driving home in their sponsored cars to quietly watch evening TV with their wives. Or to put it another way, if Pietersen was a professional footballer, he almost certainly wouldn’t look as much of a strutting peacock as can happen in cricket circles. In fact, he’d blend right in. In writing a very different assessment of Pietersen more than a year ago, I put forward the view that he might not be the sort of person the average bloke would naturally approach for friendship, but you would certainly want to play in the same team as him. Recent events may force a slight re-appraisal, but there’s no question that his weight of runs and the speed at which he gets them must force the issue. Moreover - those text messages to the South Africans, the time he spent with them between Tests… Is there not a deeper issue there? Should England have not looked for a way to manage and accommodate Pietersen better so that he wasn’t feeling the need to contact members of the opposition so frequently? It’s clear now, if it wasn’t before, that a core “cool kids” group has been emerging for some time, headed by Graeme Swann, James Anderson and Stuart Broad. KP is not among them, nor indeed is Strauss, though Strauss broadly tolerates this trendy clique. It’s all fairly unappetising, but the great Australia team of the 1990s, as well as the West Indies champions who preceded them, also tended to have big players with big egos, and not everyone was friends with each other. They coped – they picked the best players and generally kept on winning. Strauss, it has to be said, took on the England captaincy quite brilliantly to begin with, but his batting has been in perpetual decline since the start of 2011. He is not a particularly brilliant tactician and this whole KP saga frankly reflects poorly on him as well. The truth is this: for the sake of the future prosperity of Team England, it would be expedient to sack Strauss from the Test captaincy, elevate Alastair Cook to that role, promote Jonathan Trott to open and put Pietersen back in the middle order. All this could be done by the time England arrive in India for the Test series starting mid-November. Pietersen would have effectively served a disciplinary suspension during the intervening period, and Cook’s surprise success as ODI skipper makes him the only choice as team leader. It’s perhaps not the sentimental ending to the story that many would want, but can English cricket really afford to toss its most explosive, exciting and innovative batsmen onto the scrap-heap right now? I’d suggest not.