England Sacked Kevin Pietersen for Twelve Years. Then They Ran Out of Reasons.

The door

Kevin Pietersen will join England's white-ball set-up as a specialist mentor for the Sri Lanka series later this month, the tours of Australia and South Africa over the winter, and the 2027 World Cup. He is 46. He last played for England in January 2014, in Sydney, in the fifth Test of a 5-0 Ashes defeat, and the ECB then spent a month working out how to say it without saying it, and produced a statement about rebuilding "not only the team but also team ethic and philosophy," which is what you write when the actual reason is a person. A phrase attached itself to him in that month, outside cricket, and he has lived outside cricket, loudly, ever since.

He was, at the time, England's leading run scorer across all formats. Root has passed him since, and Root has never been asked to leave a room. That was never the argument. The argument was that he was difficult, and the argument won, and the ECB celebrated by losing to everyone for two years.

The dossier

In October 2014 a five-page document leaked, marked strictly privileged and confidential, listing his sins on the Ashes tour. He whistled on his way back into the dressing room after getting out in Sydney. He looked out of the window during team meetings. He said Cook's captaincy was weak and tactically inept. He said Flower should let the younger players go out and get pissed. I have been in club selection meetings where a bloke was dropped for less, so I understand the impulse, but the club bloke averaged 11, and Pietersen had 8,181 Test runs and 23 hundreds, and the ECB wrote him up like a year nine.

In May 2015 a new chairman hinted at a way back. Pietersen went to Surrey, made 355 not out against Leicestershire at the Oval, and while he was still not out overnight Andrew Strauss, the new director of cricket, told him there were massive trust issues and it wasn't happening. He got the news of a lifetime and the end of his career on the same scorecard. The ECB has never had a rigorous process it couldn't finish with a text.

What changed

Brendon McCullum said he has immense respect for KP and what he achieved in the game. McCullum is the coach England removed from the Test job in July and kept for the white-ball side, so the man the ECB half-sacked has hired the man the ECB fully sacked, to sit alongside Trescothick, Southee, Jeetan Patel and Sarah Taylor, and none of it has been explained, because there is nothing to explain. England have a World Cup in a year in South Africa and their batting against spin in the middle overs is a rumour. Pietersen was the best England batter against spin of his lifetime, and he was born in Pietermaritzburg, and the World Cup is in South Africa. That's the whole reason. Everything else is a press release.

Pietersen said putting on the England uniform again was a profound honour and a deeply special moment. He has spent twelve years on television saying the opposite of everything the ECB does, most of it correct, and now he is the ECB, and I would pay real money to watch the first team meeting where someone looks out of the window.

The part I understand

I've been dropped. Everyone has. What I've never had is the club ringing eleven years later to ask if I'd come and help the blokes who dropped me, and I can tell you exactly what I'd do, because it's what he did. I'd say yes, and I'd say it was an honour, and I'd mean it, and I'd never forgive them, and both things would be true at the same time.

That is the sport. No, sorry. That's just him. That has always been him, and it is why it took twelve years, and why it was always going to end this way, with the door open and the ECB pretending it never shut.

Things I loved

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