It’s 3.45 a.m. and I have just finished reading KP: The Autobiography . OK, it’s late but it has been worthwhile.
Other writers with earlier deadlines to catch have been forced to speed read, searching for the dirty bits in the book like the rows with England coach Andy Flower, England captain Andrew Strauss, KP’s suspicions that his dressing room colleagues were finding stuff to put on the KP Genius mocking website, that the ECB wanted to get rid of him, that his South African background, his 34 years, even his success were a cause for a campaign against him.
Heavens, it is clear that the 6ft 5in of batting skills — 13,000 runs in total for England, the charisma that draws in crowds and makes TV viewers settle on their most comfortable chair whenever he approaches the crease — is a sensitive soul with a surprising capacity for making enemies.
So did I learn anything after my long session with this book?
VaingloriousI already knew that the best sportsmen are vain, self-seeking, people who see danger from within their own team, who regard everyone they meet with suspicion, who hate media men whether they are simply recording their scores or going in search of a destructive story.
Perhaps we would all be flawed characters if we were watched at our work by thousands of baying citizens with an imperfect view and a shallow knowledge of our technique.
As for the truth about the Pietersen career I am no wiser for my midnight gallop through the pages of his life. I insist, however, there is a lot more to this book than KP’s insistence that the world was his enemy.
I still don’t know what caused the ECB to believe they would be better off without him. He apologises for his mistakes but many cricket folk still dislike him and, after all, England beat India handsomely this summer while he was many miles away. (Like Allan Lamb 30 years ago, Pietersen finds comfort in India where the crowds, he says, adore him)
So was Kevin Pietersen’s crime that he unsettled the dressing room, that he texted his friends in the South African squad whether he revealed England secrets or no, that he was too active in the social media world? Or was it simply that he was big and brash; sometimes adorned with an earring, an aggressive haircut, tattoos beyond counting? He thinks that his bosses wanted him to be a big banana on the field but a little apple as soon as he returned to the pavilion.
KP talks too much of stress but that is the custom among 21st century elite sportsmen. He wanted special treatment but the ECB thought that would upset his teammates. He claims to be uninterested in money but now earns what I imagine to be a considerable income from T20 around the world.
He says he wants to play for England again and that a regime change might bring him back. That seems unlikely; ECB will not forgive him easily.
Not only have his runs dried up — is that temporary or permanent? — but he has accumulated enemies, many in powerful positions, as easily as he has hit Test sixes.
We may not see him or his like again. More’s the pity for he is unique, with universal appeal and worth burning the midnight oil to try to understand.
