Ford and Pietersen tired of ECB bungling

Two stories that I have picked up on today with a similar theme, featuring two South Africans – Kevin Pietersen and Graham Ford.

First Pietersen revealed to us the big surprise that he is jaded and would like to get home.  “People” tell us it is because he is a mercenary, or that somehow because he isn’t English he isn’t trying as hard as everyone else.  Blah, blah, blah.  Perhaps we should cast our minds all the way back into the mists of time long forgotten (i.e. January) and consider his treatment by the ECB.

He was appointed captain last summer, performed well, gained significant credit for the teams return to India after Mumbai.  Then he complains about the coaches performance (who wasn’t?) and says that he would prefer to work with someone else.  The ECB, presumably, agree with him because Peter Moores is sacked.  Then, for good measure, they engineer Pietersen’s effective dismissal on the same day.

Pietersen made his mistakes, but if this scenario had played out within a normal 9-5 company rather than the England cricket team, the ECB would likely be facing an employment tribunal on grounds of unfair dismissal or some such.  Yet Pietersen continues to play for the team, and performed reasonably well in the test series.  Rather than criticise, we should commend him for sticking with it for as long as he has.

The second story is that Graham Ford no longer wants the England coaching job, as the ECB has taken too long over the process.  Consider that it has taken two months to draw up a shortlist, let alone conduct interviews etc, and that the shortlist contained four names that most of us could have written down in a couple of minutes, and you start to see where this is heading.

Andy Flower will get the job, partly because nobody else wants it and he is already doing it.  Good luck to him.  With the ECB to back him up, he will need all he can get.  Three months ago, all talk was of winning the Ashes this summer.  The ECB have managed to make that an impossibility through their continual ineptness.

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