It's not about being right or wrong, good or bad, it should be about the team, only the team. The so called "team" in question is the England cricket team. Over the last 4/5 years it has all been uphill for the England cricket team, and rightly so they have reached the number 1 spot in all 3 forms of the game.
This achievement was down to hard work, trust and unity. There's no doubting that the team are still hardworking and mostly trusting of each other. But some cracks seemed to have appeared in the category's of trust and unity. The media and many players seem to have blamed one person and one person only for this.
Yes we all know who that person is, i'll give you one guess as to who. Yes my friends you guessed it the man in the news in Kevin Peitersen also known as KP. Yes he is not innocent of all goings on, it is clear that sending texts to the opposition team about your team mates is not a good look.
But my line of thinking is that he sent these messages to friends, we all sometimes moan about people we work with to friends, its only natural. I also do not think that his crime is as bad as lets just say criticising a team mate in a book. A book which is open for the world to read about compared to this private message that we will never know what was said. The man who wrote the book by the way is Graeme Swann.
Swann the same person who stands by his comments saying "KP is not a leader of men, and I dont think Cook is either." That's right the guy that many believe will be the next captain is being described in public as not a natural leader. I wonder just how Cook feels that he is not "a leader of men"?
Stuart Broad is another who seems beyond criticism, accused of being part of the trouble caused on twitter he was quick to deny this. Although he denies it there seems to be quite a bit of links to the fake account created to make fun out of KP, also acused of this is Alex Hales an up and coming England player. The less said about this the better.
In the past week or so many of my friends have been talking about KP a lot of them stating "he has an ego" and "he should never play for England again". Yes maybe they are right he seems the type of person that has an ego and rub people up the wrong way, but does he really deserve the personal attack on his character?
I believe he gets the flack when England lose and when England win it the teams win, he is a match winner as shown last week at Trent Bridge with his batting and useful bowling. A match winner who England cant do without.
I am not asking for any of the other accused players to be dropped, just asking for fairness with KP. In the long term the childish behaviour shown by all the parties involved is detrimental to the team. He has apologised, what more could he do?
South Africa have already overtaken England as number 1 in T20's, and the possibility of rightly becoming the new number 1 team in test cricket. England play ODI's v South Africa and later travel to India so the number 1 ranking in ODI cricket could be under threat also. It seems that England could lose their top spot in all forms of the game soon if they don't become more united.
On the bright side one good thing to come out of this mess is that Bairstow got an opportunity and seems to have taken it well.
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