Time for the shit to hit the fan...
Kevin Pietersen exclusive interview: The truth about England's bullying culture
On the eve of the release of KP: The Autobiography Kevin Pietersen breaks his silence to give his side of the story on Andy Flower, Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, Matt Prior and the bitter end to his England career
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'Horrendous’ bullying inside England’s cricket team is among the allegations made by Kevin Pietersen as he lifts the lid on the dysfunctional culture that saw him ostracised and dumped on last winter’s disastrous Ashes tour.
In an exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport to coincide with the publication of his blistering autobiography, KP, Pietersen blames former coach Andy Flower for “ruling by fear” in Australia, extends an olive branch to captain Alastair Cook, who he says was “put in an incredibly difficult situation” by the England and Wales Cricket Board, and lambasts Matt Prior, the vice-captain, for allegedly orchestrating a campaign against him.
He also claims that current England players have contacted him urging him to be forthright in his book and regularly ask for advice on how to handle opponents.
Still hoping to play Test cricket again, Pietersen asks, as the ECB confidentiality clause in his severance agreement expires: “Why was I sacked? I’d love to know.”
Foremost among a series of accusations and grievances is the claim that a culture of bullying took hold – led, allegedly, by Prior and the bowlers who enjoyed so much success during England’s rise to No 1 Test team.
“Horrendous. Hugely disturbing,” he says. “I brought it up. All throughout my reintegration meetings [following messages sent to the opposition in 2012], I brought it up on numerous occasions. I told [Andrew] Strauss about it, I told Cook about it. It was a huge thing.”
Specifically Pietersen cites the example of fielders being forced to apologise to bowlers if they dropped a catch or made an error, and Prior yelling aggressively at team-mates: a tactic that drove Jonathan Trott to erupt in protest in a game against Bangladesh.
Pietersen says: “I could give you telephone numbers of international players around the world. You ring them and ask them about the way the England team conducted themselves through the last three, four years. Listen to them. Ask the Sri Lankans, ask the Australians. Ask the West Indians, ask the Indians. I got messages from Indians and stuff when they played against them saying: 'I can’t believe you could play with these guys.’ ”
Asked how this supposedly macho culture developed, England’s leading run-scorer in all forms of the game said: “It was allowed to develop. It’s in the book. The bowlers were given so much power. They were doing really well. Swanny [Graeme Swann] was winning game after game for us. Broady [Stuart Broad] was contributing. Jimmy [Anderson] was contributing. We always had a third or fourth seamer that was there or thereabouts. But these guys ran the dressing room.
“The thing that horrified me the most was when Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss in Bangalore before the one-day internationals said: 'Guys we’ve got to stop this, it’s not right for the team, there are guys that have come to [us] that are intimidated to field the ball.’ And they [the bowlers] had the audacity to stand there and say: 'No, if they’ve f----- up we deserve an apology.’ It’s the most angry I ever got in that dressing room. I thought, I reckon I could hit these guys. Who do you think you are, to ask for an apology from someone who’s trying his heart out, who’s playing for his country, who’s making a mistake?
“Are you perfect, are you never going to drop a catch? Are you never going to bowl a wide? Are you never even going to make a mistake? But the double standard for me was the bigger thing. If one of them messed up – if Jimmy messed up, or Swanny messed up – nothing was ever said. Prior left them alone. He never left alone [Nick] Compton or Ravi [Bopara] or Trotty.”
Pietersen also says he warned the England management that Trott was not coping with the stress in the first Test in Brisbane last winter, before his departure from the tour, only to be ignored.
He says: “The day we travel after Trotty goes home, Andy Flower comes to me and shakes my hand. He says: 'Can I shake your hand please?’ I was like, what? And he says: 'Can I shake your hand?’ He says: 'I should have listened to you.’ And just there and then I was like, uchh, go away.”
Flower built a regime, not a team
In a highly impassioned interview, in which his voice trembled several times, Pietersen outlined his belief that he was marginalised and demonised in the England set-up from the moment he lost the captaincy. He breaks his silence on his sacking after the 5-0 whitewash in Australia, and reveals just how angry he is to have had his England career taken away from him for crimes he says he did not commit and never existed anyway.
“One hundred per cent,” he says. “People say, you’re bitter, you’re bitter. I’ve answered this question in my book. There are some days when I go, I should be playing cricket for England. Why am I not playing cricket for England? And then there’s most of the other days I wake up and I go, Kevin, you came to England as a bowler, you played 104 Test matches, you’ve scored more runs than anyone else who’s ever played the game of cricket for England, you’ve got more man-of-the-matches for England than anyone’s ever got. Be happy, be proud.
“It’s taken me a long time to drain myself into that way of thinking – that I should just be proud of what I’ve achieved. That’s how I live my life now. I come here [to Wentworth, where we talked] and I play golf every day and no one can take my record away. I just needed my book to come out so people could look at it and go, well there was some stuff going on, and it wasn’t right.”
After Cook refused to confirm that Pietersen would be retained after the Ashes, the ECB summoned the team’s best player to a hotel near Lord’s and told him he was not part of the future. The explanation, as Pietersen understood it? “Cricketing reasons. We’re not going to select you. Cricketing reasons. They could hide behind that, because if they’d tried to give any other reasons I would have sued them. I would have taken them to the cleaners.”
He rejects the possibility that new evidence may be cited against him now that the ECB is also free to have its say. “They can come up with whatever they want to come up with. I don’t mind. Like I’ve said, I’m not bound by any agreements now so I can set the record straight, 100 per cent. I’m sure they’re going to come up with bits and pieces. But that [the book] is my story.
“They’re the ones that broke the confidentiality agreement [when Paul Downton, the new managing director, gave a radio interview about the fall-out], they’re the ones who constantly had leaks. And that’s how the organisation works. And that’s not my game. I have a bit too much pride for that.”
We return to the Ashes tour, where Pietersen was criticised for throwing his wicket away and looking “detached” from the rest of the team. He maintains that his only crime was standing up to Flower.
“I’ve been one of the only ones who’ve constantly through his reign as coach not said 'how high?’ when he said 'jump’. He built a regime, he didn’t build a team. I’ve told him this before. I told him during his coaching reign. I told him on numerous occasions: 'You’re playing by fear here, you want guys to be scared of you. And Andy I’m not scared of you.’ And he hated it. He had it in for me since I tried to get rid of him as second in command. He collected stamps. It was stamp after stamp after stamp, until he thought: 'I can get rid of him now, let’s get rid of him.’ ”
Parody Twitter account broke me
He accuses both Flower and Moores of a kind of control-freakery, of overloading the players with rules and information and team meetings. But is this not the modern reality of coaching? “It’s not really a modern problem because the greatest coach in the world at the moment is Gary Kirsten. I spent the IPL with Gary. We’ve got an amazing relationship.
“A lot’s been drawn on the fact that I fall out with coaches. Well, there’s an incredible amount of coaches that I’ve never fallen out with. There’s more that I’ve never fallen out with. But the ECB wanted to hang me on past misdemeanours which have proved to be – as you read in my book – just ridiculous.”
Those past misdemeanours include challenging Moores in his first incarnation as England coach and exchanging disparaging messages with South African players about Strauss, who was then the captain. Pietersen insists that his error was not disagreeing with a South African description of Strauss as a “doos” – a mild insult in his native country.
“A doos, which is just an idiot. I regret being involved in conversations like that, and I shouldn’t have been, but mentally I was totally broken. I was crying in a room with Andy Flower during that Test match, saying, how the hell has it come to this?”
Why? “Because of what had happened the previous week, where I got told by a senior player that that Twitter account [a Kevin Pietersen parody account] was being run from inside our dressing room. I was completely broken, absolutely finished, mentally shot.
“I got out in the second innings. They said, 'You can open the batting because we need 220 in 30 overs’, and I said, 'Yeah, I’ll give it a go’. Whacked a few, got out, went into the backroom at Headingley and found a spot where I slept. It was pitch black. That’s not me. I don’t do that. I was mentally completely broken.
“Yes, of course I regret getting Straussy involved. I went to his house to apologise – said: 'I’m really sorry, I should never have got you involved, it hurt your final Test match.’ And I apologised to his wife too, through him. I said, 'Please tell Ruth I’m so sorry’ because the wife always goes through it with you. But I was mentally gone, because of what happened with that Twitter. I was like – right this is a difficult place for me now.”
He denies, meanwhile, ever issuing the ECB a him-or-me ultimatum when he was the captain and Moores the coach: “It was never a him or me scenario. I said to Giles Clarke, in Chennai, in the room: 'Giles, please let me just go and bat. He can coach, no problem. Let me please just go and bat. I just cannot captain with this guy.’ Michael Vaughan couldn’t do it, Paul Collingwood couldn’t do it, but I’m the one who gets labelled with the big fall out with Moores.”
Players will support my book
Asked why other England players failed to support him in the increasingly bitter struggle with Flower, Pietersen says: “I knew I was never going to get that. Guys are worried about their jobs, worried about their mortgages, worried about their situations as English cricketers, whereas I’d been saying for years: 'Andy, I’m not worried. I love playing for England, but I’m not sitting here, and I’m not going to let you nail us, and make me feel scared of you.’
“If I think something’s wrong – and it’s got me into trouble – my big fault is that I’m too honest, and If I think something I’ll say it. I’ve fallen on the sword a few times. But also one of my good strengths is to acknowledge when I’m wrong. And I’ll always say I’m sorry when I get it wrong.
“I know that when guys finish their career, there’ll be some things that I’ve said in the book, which guys will say nothing to now because they still play for England and have ambitions to play for England, so I know that in the long term it will turn itself round.
“They won’t be bound by central contracts, so when guys write their books at the end of their careers in three, four, five years’ time there’ll be some very interesting stuff, because players have said to me, I hope you’ve got this in the book, I hope you’ve got this in the book, I hope you’ve got this in the book. I say, 'Just relax, I think you’ll enjoy my book’. Last night I had a senior player say that to me. I said, 'Just relax, it’s coming’.”
Of Prior specifically, he says: “He’s one bloke that quite a few – I could count on more than one hand – have said: 'Please can you tell the world what that guy’s like.’ ”
He started to feel like an outsider, he says, “when they got rid of me as captain [in 2009]. That’s when I started to feel it. And when the IPL came round and I spoke so positively about the IPL. And I constantly said all the players should be playing in the IPL. If we want to get better we should be playing in the IPL. I’ve been saying it for six years. I was sitting in my house the other day watching the one-day series against India, when they were hammering England, and Nick Knight and the commentators were saying, 'I just wish the England players were playing more IPL, this would be so much more of a contest’, and I just started laughing. I said to Jess [his wife], 'What have I been saying for seven years? What have I been saying for seven years?’ ”
Mention of Jess brings the spotlight round to Pietersen’s repeated battles with management over the presence or absence of close families on tour. In Australia he was told that his wife and young son Dylan could not join him until the third Test, which revived memories for him of four years earlier: “I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that in 2010 at all. I had a lot of discussions about it with him [Flower]. I begged him. I said: 'Please can I have my family with me when that Test match starts.’ No. Just a full-blown no. He said: 'Well, we’re there to do a job, we think families are a distraction.’ I was like, if families are a distraction how come we’re allowed our families in England?
“I said, on the previous tour [to Australia], I understand that the England team looked sloppy. We had mums, dads, brothers, sisters, all flying on the same plane. The boys were walking though airports with babies – and the team looked scruffy. I said: 'I get that. I totally get that, Andy. But I will not look scruffy if I’m walking through an airport with my wife and my baby – and neither will anyone else.’
“So I said if you want to ban mums, dads, brothers, sisters, aunties, nannies – I’m so cool with that, but just let us have our wives. Let me have my kid, so that when I get into the Test match zone, I’m not going out to dinner, I’m not doing anything. When I’ve had a bad day in a Test match, which is all that counts, I want Jess with me so I can talk to her or she can console me. If I’ve had a great day I want to enjoy it with her, because I’m not going out to dinner during a Test match – not in Australia I’m not – because I get hammered. Get called a w----- 24-7. The cleaning staff when they clean the room: 'Oh, morning, w-----.’ ”
This is a man demonstrably traumatised by the loss of his England career for reasons nobody inside the ECB has articulated, however unpopular he might have been down the years with some players. So did he ever feel integrated, accepted, loved?
“Just with Duncan Fletcher, and with Michael Vaughan. That’s it. I would love to know how many more runs I would have scored had Fletcher coached me throughout my career. Never if I messed up would he make me feel like it was the biggest travesty in the world. He would encourage me to continue doing stuff. My job in the England team was to win games of cricket for England. My job in the England batting order was to be aggressive. My job in the England batting order was to put fear into the opposition. My job in that batting order was to take risks, calculated risks, dominate the Test match so that we could be in a position where we could win the Test match.
“So, with that, I was going to make mistakes. And the mistakes I was going to make were going to be ones that looked reckless, which is fine. You get criticised for that – no problem.
“But I don’t take it where people assassinate my character and say, he’s playing for himself, he’s selfish, he’s not thinking about the team. Listen, we’ve got Trott, we’ve got Strauss, we’ve got Cook, we’ve got Bell. We’ve got four competent players around me playing a form of cricket which is totally different to the way I play. When I’m playing in India you look at the batting order and you go, we’ve got to get Sehwag out, Dravid’s there, Tendulkar’s there, Laxman’s there, Ganguly’s there. We have to get Sehwag. Because if Sehwag bats for two sessions, he can get 150 in a Test match and the match is gone. I’m not worried about Dravid. You can bowl to him for two days – and he’s one of my great friends – he’s a great player, but he’s not that guy who will win a Test match in a session for you.
“I was the guy in the England team who was there to win a session. If I bat for two or three sessions we stand a great chance of winning that Test match. That was my job. I did pretty well to score the number of runs I did at the average I did with so many man-of-the-matches – so I’m not having this where people say, you played for yourself, you’re selfish. But it was a great line to feed from Flower, from the ECB. Oh, he’s just a lone ranger, he’s this, he’s that. I’m not having that.”
Disengaged, Downton? I think not
Pietersen draws a sharp line between Cook, who he calls “good at heart”, and Prior. He says: “I think he [Cook] is put in an incredibly difficult position by the ECB. And I think he was fed stuff by Andy Flower, when I had that discussion in his room before the Sydney Test match. And I also think that because Alastair Cook isn’t the greatest speaker, Matt Prior was his sidekick who could talk the hind leg off a donkey.
“So he wanted him close to him. He wanted his vice-captain to do all his talking for him. So when I went after Prior and said Prior shouldn’t be in that side because he’s a bad influence, a negative influence – he picks on players – and I’ve questioned Flower and the way he ran the team, Flower and Cook would have said you’ve got to get rid of this guy. He’s back-stabbing, he’s horrendous, he’s bad for the environment.
“When actually I look at the environment now, the one thing that really does sadden me is that when I got sacked a lot of the youngsters sent me messages and said, thank you so much for your help. I still get messages from players saying, how do you play this guy [an opponent]? And I know 100 per cent for sure right now I could get back into that England side and help those youngsters become greater players. And it’s something that I would love to do.”
Pietersen has avoided lacerating Cook in the manner he reserves for Prior: “A lot of Indians hammer me about it now because I said Cooky would go on to break Sachin [Tendulkar’s] record. I’ve got great admiration for him. I hate to see the way he was this summer, because the ECB have put him in a very uncomfortable position and they could ruin his career. They literally could ruin his career.”
Flower, though, is, to Pietersen, a kind of Antichrist: “Andy Flower is a master at managing upwards. He’s got Giles Clarke in his pocket. You know what, Giles Clarke probably thought – he’s getting results, so he must be doing something right. But he was just very lucky to have players who matured into great players. Anybody could have coached that side, like the great Australian side. Is John Buchanan a great coach? I’ve heard otherwise. My grandmother could have coached that Australia side. My son could have coached our side, two years ago, three years ago.
“He [Flower] stayed a selector until he sacked me and now he’s got some cushy job where he’s looking after younger players at the academy. Are you crazy? When he was selected as the England A coach this summer I thought: 'Oh, my days. Poor youngsters.’ ”
Downton’s allegation that Pietersen was “disengaged” in Australia receives similarly short shrift: “But it’s a great story. Pietersen’s on the boundary. He doesn’t care about his team-mates. He’s disengaged. He’s gone. If I’m so disengaged and you’re watching just me in that Test match, why were you just watching me? I’d love to say: 'Paul, why were you watching just me? Has somebody told you that something’s going on? Has somebody told you I’ve lost interest in playing cricket for England?’
“Maybe you should have said to Andy Flower: He’s the greatest run-scorer for England in all forms of cricket. Why is he like that? What have you done here? That should have been the question. Because a player is what people go to grounds to watch. The paying public don’t go there to watch Andy Flower.
“I’ve not found one person – clearly there’s guys on Twitter that like to hammer me, because they just do, and believe the nonsense they’ve been fed – but I get it every single day: I’ve just had it on the golf course now. My two-ball played through a four-ball here and somebody said, 'You should be playing cricket for England, you shouldn’t be on a golf course.’
“Every single day it happens. And it makes me happy, because when I walked out to bat in that MCC game at Lord’s I got an incredible welcome to the wicket. I was petrified, thinking: 'Oh, no, how am I going to get through this, is it a good thing, should I be doing it?’ It was amazing. It was one of the most incredible days and I got so much support.”
Nobody, he insists, ever tells him he got what was coming: “Never. I’ve not had one person. During the texting thing I had a couple of people who abused me in the street, or in a restaurant, but I’ve never had it since the sacking.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to speak openly without binding contracts. So I needed to just get this all out there. There has been this incredible machine that’s worked against me. This tidal wave that’s worked against me. And I needed an opportunity to say: This is my story. It’s been the most incredible journey. Every interview over the next two weeks is probably going to be about the bad stuff. There’s been so much more good stuff. But I just needed to have this as my right of reply, because I got sacked at the end of the day. People want to know why. You look at Twitter – the interest that there still is in my sacking, and it was nine months ago. They weren’t talking about Strauss nine months after he retired.”
I believe I’ll play for England again
At the heart of this tide of anger and sadness, his testimony suggests, is a team ripped apart by cliques, intrigue and alleged bullying of the less powerful members, of friendships destroyed. Pietersen, though, has higher hopes.
“I saw Jimmy [Anderson] on finals day and I was absolutely fine with Jimmy,” he says. “I’d be fine with Broad. It’s only Prior that I’d seriously have real issues with, because of how he was portrayed as a team man, the heart and soul of the dressing room, when he was getting up to the stuff he was getting up to. And the two sides of the coin where I was the bad guy and doing everything wrong.
“Yet when he was talking about Big Bash contracts and how the sponsors were going to change the colour of his gloves, during a Test match in India, while a month or two before, when I was doing my reintegration, I was getting hammered for talking too much about the IPL. I was sitting there thinking, am I actually hearing this stuff?
“Then he wanted to start a media campaign to stop me getting the vice-captaincy, because Shane Warne and Michael Vaughan were talking favourably about me being Alastair Cook’s deputy. That’s what I took him up on in January when I got sacked. I said: 'I’ve just been rung by two players in Australia who’ve been told by somebody in the ECB that you tried to start a media campaign against me.’ Is that seriously the heart and soul of the dressing room? This big team player?
“I couldn’t have been wrong. He doesn’t have a central contract now. They’ve got rid of him. And a lot of people are very happy.”
Regrets, he has a few, but remarkably he still craves his England place back: “I can look Andy Flower in the eye and say: 'Andy, everything that’s in my book I told you to your face. Everything. So if you want to do anything about it, you could have done it ages ago.’
“Sport’s unfortunately now just like politics. I know that my issues are not just the captain of England but the board. If that changes – and I believe it could do in the next few months – then I really believe I could play for England again. The reason I want to play for England is that I honestly 100 per cent believe I can help the youngsters get better and I believe I can help Cooky get better. I said to Andy Flower in that Ashes series, please, whenever you speak to Cooky, if he needs my help I’ll help him. I’m not going to force myself on him. I want him to be a great captain. And I’ve said that to Cooky too.
“People ask me: 'Were you bad to manage?’ I was so professional. I turned up at training on time, I never wore the wrong clothes, I was never late for the bus, I never missed a team meeting. I trained harder than anybody. I questioned the coach if I thought he was wrong. I questioned Alastair Cook the day before the Sydney [final Ashes] Test match when I thought he was wrong; I said, dude you shouldn’t be talking about fitness. We’re being smashed. We should be going to enjoy Sydney for the last time, the last week. That’s where you should be going – a little bit of directional change. Not be in the gym.
“It’s just my side of the story. I’m incredibly passionate about English cricket. I’ve always wanted England to win. I’m a winner. I hardly lost a school game when I was at school. I’m just a winner. And if I think we’re being guided away from situations and we’re not able to enjoy situations – like Andy Flower built a regime, he didn’t build a team – then I’ll speak up, because I want to see people happy.”
Pietersen’s big hope is that he will be seen as the outsider who was cruelly treated, scapegoated, but spoke truth to power, exposed the cricketing Establishment. “But they didn’t like to be questioned,” he reflects. “Andy Flower didn’t like one of his soldiers to hammer him. He was the boss. He wanted me to fear him.
“I’ll never fear you, buddy.”
