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Boycott on L'Affaire Pietersen

Geoffrey Boycott in The Telegraph

This has been a sorry week for English cricket, but the England and Wales Cricket Board started this farce with Kevin Pietersen so it should not try to take the moral high ground.

Kevin is a sinner but he has been sinned against by the ECB. There are rights and wrongs on both sides and whatever Pietersen’s faults, the ECB is not blameless.

For me, it reached its lowest point on Tuesday when a “strictly confidential” ECB document was leaked to the media. The points it contained were pathetic and it was a crass idea to put together such a report to try to trash Kevin. It stinks.

Whoever dreamt that up is not fit to lead English cricket. Kevin has been a fantastic batsman for England. He thrilled millions and helped win matches for the England team that enabled some people at the ECB to bask in reflected glory.

Yes Kevin was awkward, difficult, different and at times his own worst enemy. But his record and his performances do not deserve a character assassination. The ECB should be dignified about it all and not try to belittle him.  

I hope the ECB is investigating how one of its confidential documents reached the public domain. If it discovers someone within the ECB leaked it then they should get the sack. If nobody is sacked then we can only assume that the ECB was happy or even complicit with the document being leaked in order to denigrate Kevin.

Some of the points contained in this document are so trivial it beggars belief. He had rows with the captain and coach about the way the team were performing, that sort of thing has gone on forever. It is OK if it happens within the confines of the dressing room. You are supposed to have open discussion in the dressing room and get things off your chest. In fact, the way we played in Australia, I would have said some far worse things to my team-mates if I was still playing.

Another claim is he took some younger players out for a drink in Adelaide. Give me a break - drinking has always gone on and that should not be dignified with a reply. It was only last year after a drinking session we had England players peeing on the Oval pitch after an Ashes win and the ECB or Andy Flower did nothing about it. We had Andrew Flintoff full of drink and trying to ride a pedalo in the West Indies but it did not finish his career. We had Joe Root drinking in the early hours of the morning when he was attacked by David Warner during the Champions Trophy last year. On the field James Anderson uses personal abuse every Test and nothing has been done about it.

The report also claims Kevin looked at his watch and out the window during team meetings. He was probably bored to death. I am sorry but the ECB is making itself look like a laughing stock.

The Yorkshire committee tried to do the same thing to me when they had an “in-depth investigation” into why we were not winning championships. They tried to blame me for everything. They even got a tea lady at Warwickshire to write a letter of complaint saying I had taken the crusts off my sandwiches which had upset her.

When they sacked me in 1983 the members were horrified and called a special meeting to sack the whole b----- committee. So I would say to the ECB, be careful how you try to manipulate events. Why? Because England cannot lay all the blame for the Ashes whitewash on KP. If everyone in the England team had bowled, batted, captained and managed better we would not have been rock bottom after the Ashes.

We were the worst I have ever seen in Australia. If the ECB, Andy Flower and Alastair Cook cannot see they too were to blame then they are sticking their heads up their a---. It is ridiculous to make one man the scapegoat.

I am not blindly sticking up for Kevin. But most very talented sportsmen are like diamonds. They sparkle and glitter and light up the game. They catch the eye and enchant the public. But all diamonds are flawed. They are not perfect and you have to learn to love and nurture a diamond. They have not done that with Kevin.

Look, I know three captains who would have handled him no problem at all: Michael Vaughan, Mike Brearley and Raymond Illingworth. They would have set boundaries early on in their relationship with Kevin. They would have accepted you have to give a bit of leeway to a rare talent. But they would never humiliate him in public. They would allow lots of dressing-room banter, which is good for team spirit. Taking the mickey out of each other encourages laughter in the work-place. But they would never allow someone to humiliate a team-mate outside the dressing room, which is what happened with this KP Twitter parody account.

While that was going on, there were strong rumours somebody in the dressing room was either involved in it or giving information to the author to embarrass Kevin.

We cannot prove that but I heard at the time it was going on. The ECB should have solved that immediately. If any player is involved in helping to publicly embarrass a team colleague, it is not acceptable. Flower should have dealt with that as coach, or the captain, Andrew Strauss. Any player involved should have been suspended because it was not funny. The problem was that Flower and Kevin did not get on, so Andy probably could not be bothered and Strauss was getting ready to quit as captain, so neither of them wanted the aggravation. Once again the ECB failed in its duty.

This is not a one-eyed support for Kevin from me but a defence of fair play. There is no excuse for some of his stupid shots when England were in trouble. He gave the impression, rightly or wrongly, that he could not care less. There was also no excuse for KP constantly agitating to play a full IPL season to earn his $2 million for eight weeks’ work. England compromised and allowed him half that but told him he had to be back for the first Test of the summer. England were right on that. He had been given an opportunity to play for England and he was contracted to the ECB on good money. Do not forget, his IPL deals only came about because he had been given the chance to showcase his talents by England.

Kevin wanted the penny and the bun. He did not want to give up anything. He could not see this was fair and there was constant bickering going on behind the scenes.

This chasm between Pietersen, Flower and the ECB widened over time. It started in 2008 when KP was captain and he recommended Peter Moores and Flower should be removed from coaching the team. Instead the ECB sacked him as captain over the telephone and eventually promoted Flower to be his boss. Yet again someone from the ECB leaked KP’s sacking to the media . As a result Hugh Morris could not tell him face to face but had to ring him up in South Africa and tell him he had lost his job. Hugh was afraid if he did not forewarn KP he would be met at the airport by a media scrum. Kevin was so upset and to save face resigned. It is hardly surprising the rot set in.

For years, the ECB picked KP in the team under sufferance because he could help win matches.

When he failed to do that during the last two Ashes series they simply decided they could not take any more and he had to go.

Even the ECB could not do that honourably. Both sides agreed not to make any comments until after Oct 1. KP kept his end of the bargain but the new MD, Paul Downton, in trying to justify its decision, broke it by publicly criticising KP. And a red-faced ECB had to apologise on his behalf. What a mess.

The importance of failure

Success can dazzle, even blind. It's in failure that those like Jonathan Trott can address their weaknesses

Rob Steen in Cricinfo

March 19, 2014

 

Jonathan Trott: mired in a personal trough © AFP

What happened to me? Did I lose my talent? Am I ever going to be good again?

Find me a public performer who hasn't echoed Bill Murray's self-pitying, crestfallen lament in Wes Anderson'sThe Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Jonathan Trott might have served his cause better had he plumped for such candour and simplicity - it might even have spared him Michael Vaughan's intemperate outburst - but no matter. Depression, stress, burnout, anxiety, panic - variations on the theme of mental unfitness are endless.

"I remember day two or three, it was a bit of a blur, I was getting headaches and all sorts of things and I wasn't eating properly towards the end and that's when the sleep started getting disruptive and emotionally that was when I was worst and it just boiled over. I had nothing left in the tank - mentally and emotionally pretty drained." The number of appearances of the word "and" in the first of those sentences tells us a lot.

As Trott recounted his feelings during last November's Brisbane Ashes Test to Sky Sports viewers, the memories jostled for breathing space; a disorderly queue of negative emotions was being flushed out. Eye contact was strong and certain, but that doesn't mean the scars don't hurt. Amid more measured comments, yes, those references to "crazy" and "nutcase" were supremely insensitive - one of the few things Vaughan was right about in his own insensitive, somewhat hypocritical tirade (well, he did resign the captaincy of his country mid-series). But perhaps Trott felt that distancing himself from a graver clinical condition was a necessary part of his recovery. The message was plain: "I can be good again… I will be good again."

A few years back, "burnout" was a genuine and growing concern: even before the IPL was a glint in the BCCI's eye, multiplying formats and a concertina-like international programme were placing an ever-increasing strain on the leading performers. Then came the domestic T20 eruption; now all bets were off. Now "burnout" was the fear that dare not speak its name. If the players chose to spread themselves even thinner, well, that was their funeral. Frankly, my dear, who gave a damn? Trott's travails should compel us to think anew, with greater compassion. The employers who arranged 61 Tests for their charges over the past five years have far more to answer for on that score than they do over the way they handled his sudden fall from grace.

Older readers might find themselves harking back 40 years to a similar episode involving Geoff Boycott, whose intensity Trott has always seemed bent on emulating, as Mark Ramprakash did before him. The superficial cause was Boycott's repeated humiliations by bowlers of trifling gifts, primarily Eknath Solkar (such is the contempt in which the Yorkshireman holds the late Indian left-arm swinger, the latter is not even accorded the respect of a forename in Boycott's first autobiography, published in 1987).

"Batting to me is more than a mechanical use of techniques," Boycott explained. "I have to feel in a good frame of mind if I am to do well." There was a lot preying on it: difficulties over his benefit season, a rotten start to the summer by Yorkshire, and the usual internecine squabbles at Headingley, let alone the selectors' galling - as he saw it - preference for Mike Denness as England captain over his own claims.

	When nothing is working as it should, as had been the case for Trott since August 2013, convincing oneself that class truly is permanent and that form can only ever be temporary can tax the hardiest of hearts

The tipping point was another cheap dismissal in the first Test at Old Trafford. Nor did it help that it was "glaringly obvious that Denness wanted about as much to do with me as the Black Death". In taking stock, attested Boycott, "I realised, to my horror, that the desire and drive to play for England had gone. There was no satisfaction in it, very little involvement, even less pleasure… I couldn't take it any longer."

He duly informed Alec Bedser, the chairman of selectors, that he was "in no mental or emotional condition to play well for England". Yet when he put the phone down he felt no relief, and certainly no better. By the time he reached Bath, for Yorkshire's match against Somerset, he was "low, confused and physically ill… it might have been stress-related, I really don't know, but it was real and painful enough".

That September, by when his reign as Yorkshire captain was under threat, he did the unthinkable: he turned his country down. "Had anyone mentioned the mere possibility of it to the kid who played in the South Yorkshire back-streets or the young man who battled his way into the Yorkshire and England sides, he would have been invited to go forth and multiply. I would have considered him certifiable. But the culmination of events, circumstances and attitudes was too much to resist. I knew I could not go to Australia and do a good job for England." Not for another three years would he do international battle, yet recover he did, and prosper. Trott can draw hope from that.

In an interview published in the Times last Saturday, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard professor billed by Rick Broadbent as an "expert on losing streaks", spelled out the commonalities linking sport and the world beyond. "In a losing streak everything deteriorates. There is often infighting and a lack of desire to show up for work because the situation is so unappealing. You see it in inner-city communities too, where neighbourhoods form gangs and fight against each other rather than working together." In an unusually perceptive moment, the all-too aptly named footballer Robbie Savage recalled the "soul-destroying" nature of a horrendous streak for Derby County not only robbing him of enthusiasm but reducing him to hatred for the game he once adored.

Trott, though, was mired in a personal trough. He'd gone 18 Test innings without a century before (and not that long ago). He'd also gone four ODIs without reaching 30 before, twice. This time, both happened concurrently, gnawing at his marrow.

One of the chief advantages of playing a uniquely multi-format sport is that success in one discipline can refuel another, or even persuade you to focus exclusively on a single discipline, the better to spare yourself all that angst and pain. But when nothing is working as it should, as had been the case for Trott since August 2013, convincing oneself that class truly is permanent and that form can only ever be temporary can tax the hardiest of hearts (unless, of course, your scorebook entry reads DG Bradman or SF Barnes).

****

	Has a sporting figure ever treated success and failure with such startling equanimity as Rafael Nadal? Stephen Dunn / © Getty Images  Enlarge

Repeated exposure to failure can be our undoing, but it can also reinvigorate. As that hoary old saying goes, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. For professional sportsfolk, unlike most mortals, failure, however relative, is transparent and statistical, sometimes tweetworthy, always inescapable. For all of us, what counts is how we cope with it, and the way we heed its lessons.

The challenge to those recuperating from a setback is whether to risk the self-diminishing agonies of failure again. All the more reason, then, to salute those who take that risk for our amusement, and when there is little or no apparent need. Witness Rafa Nadal, whose improbable comeback from a career-threatening injury has been immeasurably more successful than the tennis writers and even his doctors predicted.

Had that regal racqueteer's stomach churned at the prospect of failure, he would have taken one of two courses: he would never have dared return to the court (it's not as if he needed the pesetas or kudos) or, in so doing, that renowned courtly behaviour would have lapsed. Neither happened, almost certainly because Nadal possesses the quintessential prerequisite of all champions: those competitive fires still burned. Has a sporting figure ever treated those twin imposters with quite such startling equanimity?

We make much of self-assurance as the most priceless of assets. Not only does it embolden, it also enhances the power of bluff. Confidence, achievement and reputation form a virtuous circle; how often do off-form achievers prevail purely by dint of repute? Ian Botham managed just 40 wickets in his last 23 Tests, and most of those owed more to name than skill. That confidence may or may not be innate; for those whose work exposes them to daily ordeals by competitive fire, in public view, it can certainly be mercurial. One numbing or humbling failure at an inopportune time can do more to deflate it than a hundred triumphs can buoy it. It depends on how deep it runs.

Yet strength can only be enhanced by reducing or eradicating vulnerability; by logical extension, therefore, failure can be more important than success. Failure means those glances in the mirror are likelier to be stares - broodier, more searching, less self-deluding. Weaknesses are likelier to be addressed, lessons learned. Success, conversely, can dazzle, even blind. It can also deter acknowledgement of the influence exerted by sheer blind luck, an ingredient never more potent than in the competitive arts. Perhaps only the tiny ranks of the doubt-free actively desire failure - as motivation, as a counter to complacency - but maybe that's what keeps us all going. Should we fear it? No, but a spot of constructive loathing can come in handy.

Bill Murray/Steve Zissou relocated his mojo - or at least a semblance of it - with a gun, saving his crew from a band of murderous pirates. A less violent loosening-up might do Trott a power of good.

Of Boycott, KP, and the ECB's alienation

Jon Hotten in Cricinfo

 

Funny that Boycott should be annoyed by someone hellbent on batting the way they want to  © Getty Images

Enlarge

On 13 August 1983, Geoffrey Boycott made a century for Yorkshire against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham. He stayed in all day, scoring 140 from 347 deliveries and angered his captain Raymond Illingworth by running out the free-scoring Kevin Sharp, who'd made a much faster hundred, while trying to keep the strike, and refusing to raise his own scoring rate.

Illingworth reported the incident to the Yorkshire committee and set in motion one of the most extraordinary uprisings in the history of English cricket. The committee issued a statement rebuking Boycott for batting that was "not in the best interests of the side", and was met with a furious response - from Boycott himself, who went on radio to deny that he had been officially reprimanded; from his friend Brian Clough, who used his Daily Mirror column to defend Boycott's batting; and from Sid Fielden, who led a group of reformers that would become central to the story. 

On 3 October, the committee voted unanimously not to offer Boycott a contract for the 1984 season. The Reform Group swung into action. More than 400 people attended a meeting in a hotel in Ossett, and the committee was forced to vote again on the issue. The sacking was upheld via a statement that stressed the need to encourage younger players without the "dissension and discord that creates a lack of confidence".

Another group, the Members 84, was formed specifically to deal with the Boycott situation, and nothing less than a civil war broke out. Under tremendous public pressure, the committee offered a bizarre compromise that would have allowed Boycott to take part in six Championship games, but at a meeting on 21 January 1984, amid scenes described as "evangelical", a vote of no confidence in the committee was carried by the Yorkshire members, along with a motion to reinstate Boycott. The committee, which included Fred Trueman and Ronnie Burnett, resigned, and Boycott ultimately played on until his retirement at the end of the 1986 season. "Boycottshire" had spoken.

That winter of discontent came to mind as another story played out this week. It had many of the same elements: a dominant player of polarising force, an organisation out of touch with the feelings of its public, and a maverick media operator speaking out.

For Boycott read Kevin Pietersen, for the Yorkshire committee the ECB, and for Brian Clough read Piers Morgan.

Pietersen is one of the few English players to have commanded public attention in the way that Boycott had done. They could not be further apart as batsmen and yet they share certain traits, foremost a tendency to speak utterly plainly. They both have complex, sensitive personalities and have often found themselves the injured party in their confrontations with authority. It's fair to say that both have been scapegoats at times, and that both contributed to their own woes, too.

Around Boycott was the blunt, often brutal language of Yorkshire cricket in the 1980s. We live now in the age of euphemism, and thus the battle for the advantage has been more subtly fought. Pietersen has not been publicly denounced as Boycott was. All of that has been hidden in legality and management speak. Yet this language, opaque and non-specific, is key to the Pietersen issue.

The desire to control information is a phenomenon of modern sport and cricket is not unique in striving to do so, but the ECB has a particularly bad case of it. The rigid paradigm that they have constructed around their communications, from the way they school young players to talk about the game to the press statements laden with meaningless office jargon, has detached them from the very people they most need to understand them: the fans.

It resulted in the slapstick interview given by the new chief selector James Whitaker (to rights holders Sky and the BBC only) this week. Even pre-recording could not save the unfortunate Whitaker, who was chained to desperate sentences like "There's a group of players there looking forward to re-energising this team, going forward with different values, re-evaluating the culture of the team."

These constructs of language echo emptily. They are designed to sound good without conveying anything specific, and they have a dehumanising effect. The people who step forward to utter them become trapped and typecast by the image that they create. They lack the linguistic power to challenge a forceful attack in plain English. They are evasive and diversionary and ultimately counter-productive.

It's probably fair to say that the ECB has never been as alienated from public opinion as it is now, and as the Yorkshire committee found out, that can be a dangerous space to occupy.

Only one person has attempted to argue a case for Pietersen's exclusion on cricketing grounds. Geoffrey Boycott took the airwaves to say that KP's batting this winter had been irresponsible and selfish, and he deserved to be dropped for it. You may or may not agree with him (and there is humour in Boycott becoming annoyed by someone hellbent on batting he way they want to) but his argument was clear. There is some sanity in that.

Failed by the lawyer

NICK ROBINSON in The Hindu

  

 

The judicial system is looking the other way as unscrupulous professional behaviour by advocates is causing distress to litigants and affecting their cases

Lawyers have an illustrious pedigree in India to emulate. Nehru, Ambedkar, and many of the country’s most pre-eminent leaders were trained as lawyers. Yet today, ask a typical litigant what he thinks of the profession and he is likely to regale you with stories of being tied up in court for years and facing unscrupulousness and exasperation.

The plot lines of these stories become predictably repetitive. Lawyers do not show up at scheduled hearings. When they do appear, they are often not prepared. Litigants complain that their lawyers do not keep them informed about their case and that they are charged for hearings where nothing of substance happens.

Double fees

Ironically, complaints become even more pronounced about high-profile lawyers who commonly overbook their schedules, expecting everyone else to be accommodative. A prestigious law firm employs an associate to follow a well-known senior advocate at the Supreme Court to try to ensure that the senior turns up for scheduled hearings of their client. Double fees have reportedly become accepted practice among many of the biggest names in litigation — one fee to argue a case, another fee to guarantee they will actually show up.

The cost of such behaviour is high not just to clients, but for everyone. When a hearing is rescheduled to accommodate a lawyer, the other side still has to pay its counsel. The public has to pay for the courtroom and the judge. With so much time being wasted, cases take longer, a backlog ensues, and economic efficiency and justice suffer.

Fears

The poor are in the worst position to navigate this mess. Take the example of a single mother who was acquitted by a Delhi court earlier this year. She had been detained by the police in 2009 when they (mistakenly) thought she was connected to accused drug dealers in her neighbourhood. With the money she had, she hired a popular, if modestly priced, private lawyer. The lawyer kept missing hearings, which meant that the judge could not decide her case. Frustrated by these delays, distraught from being separated from her epileptic daughter, and unable to get in touch with her lawyer, she sank into depression in jail and attempted suicide. She survived and was eventually freed, albeit traumatised by the four year ordeal.

Why is such behaviour by lawyers tolerated? In private, judges will admit that it is difficult for them to discipline members of the bar. Although lawyers may make their arguments to judges in grovelling terms, it is the lawyers who often have the power in the relationship. Judges fear that if they try to discipline lawyers in their courtroom they will be spoken ill of by the bar: a powerful constituency which could impact their chances of a promotion or post-retirement appointments.

Others fear the possibility of lawyers boycotting the courtroom. Still others think it is simply not worth the trouble of going against a group of which they were once a part of.

Independent boards

Meanwhile, the Bar Council of India has done far too little to rein in errant advocates. Although the Bar Council releases no publicly available annual report, in the little information that is available for 2010-11 their disciplinary committee reportedly suspended only 14 members of the bar in the entire country (by comparison, about 800 lawyers are disbarred and 3,000 suspended each year in the United States).

Part of the problem is that lawyers in India largely police themselves, creating few incentives for them to vigorously enforce high standards. India might learn from the experiences of the United Kingdom or Australia where independent boards, which include non-lawyers, now oversee the profession and attempt to put litigants’ interests first.

Beyond restructuring and reinvigorating the means through which lawyers are disciplined, other steps are needed to curb lawyer misbehaviour. A litigant bill of rights should be widely publicised informing litigants of what to expect from their lawyer and what redress they have available if mistreated. For example, when litigants try to switch advocates, many find their original lawyer refuses to give them back the files related to their case, making it all but impossible to go to a new counsel. Such self-serving tactics should be swiftly punished.

Allow advertising

Given the opacity of the judicial system, most litigants find lawyers through personal contacts. As a result, their choice is often based on anecdotes and misunderstandings about what they really need. To help litigants better choose their lawyer, the Bar Council should consider repealing the current ban on advertising for legal services and allow carefully restricted advertising to provide better information to litigants about their options. Similarly, the judiciary could help the public better compare lawyer performance by creating a type of lawyer report card that would detail how often a lawyer missed a hearing or was so unprepared that a hearing needed to be rescheduled.

The legal profession rightly values its independence, but when it fails to self-regulate it makes itself vulnerable to government interference and public condemnation. Many honest and industrious lawyers lament the unprincipled practices of their peers and the time they end up wasting in undisciplined court rooms. It is time for everyone — the bar, the bench, the government, and the public — to demand more from the profession.