KP and the English cricket establishment

They got him in the end. Not before he became England's highest-ever runscorer. Not before he was part of a No.1 team, three Ashes wins, a World Twenty20 title and victory in India. And not before he entertained millions in a way no other Englishman could. But finally, after a decade of mistrust and suspicion, English cricket has dumped Kevin Pietersen.

I say “they” because as collateral from the Ashes mauling mounts, it feels as though an old rift in English cricket is rupturing once more. The establishment, with its management systems, conservatism and ruthless profiteering seems suddenly so distant from the many outsiders whose love and money fuels the sport.

Pietersen is a talisman. An Englishman who epitomises “outsider”. After nearly a decade in the England set-up he is left with no friend in the dressing room and no supporters at the ECB. His restless innovation and calculated daring made him one of the most magnetic batsmen to have ever taken guard, but also an individual utterly convinced of his own way. A self-obsessed genius. Most are.

Though the runs he scored and series he won were gleefully accepted by captains, coaches and administrators whose lofty reputations he helped establish, they never seemed to accept the man himself.

It might well be that his dressing-room presence was untenable. His rumoured put-down of James Taylor offers a glimpse of what off-field life was like with Pietersen. Though it reveals something about the nature and utility of managerial thinking if the best player is sacked for being unmanageable.

But if there is a reason compelling enough to deprive England fans of Pietersen, the ECB has to spell it out. Allowing lawyers to gag them speaks of how far the ECB have distanced themselves from the public. So far, a struggling captain, a new managing director and an unappointed coach have made the decision without explanation.

All the while, the outsider fans that pay the salaries of the suits, coaches and players have been told nothing beyond obfuscation and innuendo. Parts of the paper press, meanwhile, are quick to sanctimoniously remind us of our ignorance, but far less willing to provide the clarity we pay them for.

For the second time in a month the ECB have taken a monumental decision without explanation. When they helped sever cricket's global development and establish the Big Three cabal, much of the print media (Atherton & Berry apart) were silent, before eventually spinning a story about the pragmatic “realities” of the grown-up world. The entire issue passed without the ECB fielding significant public scrutiny.

It speaks of a deeper and more longstanding narrowness in English cricket. The ECB executive board is dominated by well-to-do white men, the England team is dominated by private-school boys, and even in 2014, there is no non-white coach of any county team or in the National Cricket Performance Centre.

The broadcast media may provide the best of any sport coverage in the country, but it is still dominated almost entirely by ex-pros. Test Match Sofa, an amateur upstart, is being quietly suffocated by an establishment needlessly wary of outsider voices.

The danger is that such suspicion creates myopia. From WG Grace to Pietersen -  via Tony Grieg and David Gower – English cricket has long had an institutional suspicion of free-wheeling mavericks. Though, at least Grace et al got a chance. It is the less celebrated, like Maurice Holmes, who really suffer from the reflex for orthodoxy that festers in the English game.

If England want talk of a “team ethic”, “rebuilding” and new “philosophy” to be more than MBA buzzwords, they should look a little deeper and think a little broader about the way they approach the game. A “fresh start” would be to embrace the irritants, freaks and non-conformists.  

Unthinkable? An England team without managers

If the Ashes mega-series taught us anything, it was that management was absolutely right until it was wrong. That Andy Flower's professional, marginal-gains micromanagement was superior to Darren Lehman's more old-fashioned, tell-a-joke; be-a-bloke style. Until the opposite was true.

As England now decide on what to rescue and restore from their wreckage of a winter, there will be much focus on Flower and his squadron of backroom assistants. But where does responsibility lie? Are the players accountable for their own performance or does the environment they're in matter too?

Andrew Strauss articulated the puzzle perfectly when trying to defend England's management team. Flower, he said, deserves support because he has overseen so many successes. Equally he shouldn't be blamed for this series, because it's the players who take the field.

Management science relies on the myth that results can be achieved if the correct processes are developed. The moral of the Moneyball story was that there are no barriers to success. Given enough information and enough analysis, strategies can always be found.

Team England seem staunch believers in the management ideal. It means they place enormous importance in their pre-cooked plans and enormous faith in their ability to control. So better young players develop under their tutelage at Loughborough than out of view with the counties. Better menus are determined by the experts than let individuals decide what's good for them.

Players are required to be automators, delivering the agenda developed by the centre.

It made England incredibly proficient against middling teams. As long as there was no outlier x-factor that could elude management planning, England were ruthless. But whenever mystery struck – a doosra, a counter-attack, Mitch - England got derailed. 

It's not that players took the field and unthinkingly performed Gooch or Saker's instructions. But they imbued a culture of management control that drained them of autonomy, accountability and the ability to think on their feet.

Though England are more extreme in their fondness for managerialism, they aren't unique. It's the direction all teams are moving. But it wasn't always this way.

The plethora of coaches is a fairly recent development in the sport. As Michael Atherton wrote recently: “On my first Australian tour, in 1990-91, we travelled with a manager, whose job it was to sort out travel arrangements and hand out disciplinary fines, a coach, a scorer and a physiotherapist.

“A player... could ask the coach or captain for advice; he could ask a senior player to have a watch in the nets; he could ring home and speak to a trusted adviser; or he could sort things out for himself. It meant that there was no less advice available than now, but it was less structured, less formal.”

The great West Indies and Australian teams got by without the dense layers of management England use. As recently as 2007, an Indian side led by Rahul Dravid and packed with senior pros secured a historic series win in England without a coach.

It won't happen now but as England ponder their new era it's worth wondering what would happen if they did away with a management team altogether.

Office space Australians

There is a great scene in Mike Judge's 1999-film Office Space where protagonist Peter Gibbons is reprimanded by his boss for failing to include a cover sheet on the report he filed. His six managers mean he gets the same reprimand over and again. Each time his argument that he 'forgot, the report is done, and it won't take long to sort a new cover sheet' is ignored. Eventually, he just stops caring.

It came to mind when news broke that Australia are dropping their best bowler, vice-captain and two leading reserves for failing to submit to management three points on how they and the team could improve.

Despite the lavish salaries and lifestyles cricketers enjoy these days, it's managerial and not player power that defines the era. It is clear in this case like it was with the KP fiasco last summer.

Perhaps these management tasks matter. It's possible Mitchell Johnson had crucial insights on the technical failings of his team's top-order but he's more likely to have made a difference with his left-arm slingers. On the field James Pattinson looks one of the world's brightest fast-bowling prospects; he's certainly Australia's best bowler. Is that not enough?

Iain O'Brien put it best when he Tweeted: “What if those 4 Aust players were training/netting/gyming – making themselves better personally - & didn't have time to “form fill”?”

In a managerial era such commitment doesn't count unless it's demonstrable through means acceptable, and accountable to those up top. In Britain this means NHS nurses are told they don't care unless they fill out the appropriate forms “proving” they've paid attention. In the Australian cricket team this means players must 'take responsibility' and be 'more professional' only by completing the tasks set by managers reading the latest in business leadership. It's less a case of empowering people than it is about infantilising them.

Drop Shane Watson for his failings as a batsman, not as an administrator. Else, treat him as a child and he might just stomp off home.