Famed retired cricket legend Michael Vaughan has chimed in on the Kevin Pietersen saga, giving his thoughts into the much publicised sacking of Pietersen from the English team.
Vaughan explains in a column on the Telegraph that the 33-year-old South African-born star’s new autobiography has brought up confusion and sadness that the whole affair involving Pietersen was not handled better.
I have said for a long time that Kevin is one of the easiest players that I managed.
One thing I learnt with KP: if you distance yourself from him he will distance himself quite easily from you. Anyone who took him on, he would bin, and that is clearly what has happened with Matt Prior.
The other thing that seems to have hurt Kevin more than anything was the “KP Genius” parody Twitter account. Even at the time, I suspected that there had to be some input from inside the dressing room. It was just too close to the bone.
It is easy to say: “Just laugh it off, it’s only Twitter.” But it is going out to hundreds of thousands of people and belittling you. When you finish your career, OK, you can deal with that sort of stuff. But when you are in the team it is toxic.
The England side may claim to have been a tight unit, but during that period it seemed like they were trying to disrupt Kevin, to squeeze him out.
Vaughan went on to say that the England team management are essentially the ones to blame for the fallout and resulting controversy.
Ultimately the situation deteriorated because no one had the energy to fix it. As a leader, or a management group, these kind of players – the sort who are usually referred to as “mavericks” – are a drain on your time and your resources.
Check out the full story on The Telegraph.
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