England Loses No.1...Inspite of a Happy Dressing Room

England Loses No.1...Inspite of a Happy Dressing Room..tomorrow.
and it stands 90-10 towards an England test match defeat also.......the 10% if Trott can play out of his skin and bat through.......

Nevertheless

• When they won with KP in the team……it was in spite of him
• When they lose with KP in the team…..it was because of him
• Then they get rid of him….to have a happy dressing room…..and all and sundry big ones and piddly nobodies come and tell us how the dressing room is a better place…and he is not being missed…and the spirit of team spirit is highest ever……and then all the cuddling and huddling and drama of happiness in the public eye……

What we’ve gotta see :

1. Will Flower or his doctors spin this in any way and blame it on KP ?

2. No.1 gone……how long will they fuel Flower and ECB ego and keep KP out……will sanity prevail after the T20 w’cup or after India tour ?

Some might make a notional argument that JB replaced KP and made a 95 odd…….that’s a self-defeating argument.
What that shows is that ECB/ Flower should have persisted with JB instead of Taylor or better enough in place of Strauss right from T1…..or even earlier than that.

The Irony:

Pietersengate forced JB in..who delivered………KP will be back most likely for India tour ( after the impending T20 W’cup debacle) or certainly after that

JB will stay……as will either of Bopara or Taylor

So who will go ?

Strauss…..obviously

The ultimate victim of Pietersengate is the end of Strauss….what goes around, come around some might say……..wheels of Karma others……….and self denial a few others…

Moral of the story
It’s all about bottomline….winning……the guise of happy, nice, team-spirit, camaraderie type softy-softy thingies work in schools…in real men’s world…you do what you need to do to win.
Unhappy and winning is better……than happy/nice / full of spirit but losing.

What is hearetning and saddening simultaneously is:

--that England still has the ability to be a top team and with effort and luck No.1
--the sad part is that selectorial agendas and politcs doesn't let it play to it's peak potentials......
--England is effectively a 8 1/2 ( 8.5) man teamr in thois test and a 9 man team for quite some time this yea...with Strauss and Stuart Broad far from the meritorious...and whoever is in place of KP reduces the other half.

with 8.5 to 9 men they still showed us they can compete......
and had England picked the team on merit they may not have lost the 5 ( or 6 tomorrow) tests...maybe only 2 or 3 of those and rtemianing could have been wins or draws.

Will they learn...

will they pick best 11 and then the captain.......like WI at their peak did and great Australians team did .

will they piick bowlers for their bowling abilities first and not for batting skills
will they pick bowlers on current form and not any emotionalism and favouritisms... ?
If they introspect...ask all those questions...and answer them honestly....Eng will remain a top side...else the free fall is for all but those in self denial to see...

I didn't bother reading it, but is it safe to say it makes several references to the ECB being worse than the Nazis, KP did nothing wrong, everybody hates him because hes really handsome and cool, Strauss and Flower burn effigys of him in the middle east and everybody bullies him on myspace?

I would love KP back in the side, anyone would with the quality of player he is. But the fact is he slagged off his team mates to friends in the side they are locked in a fiersome battle with on who will be world no.1. That is almost unforiveable and as much as you can say 'its all what matters on the field' you need to be mentally prepared out there on the field, and with KP in the camp its highly unlikely preparation would be perfect as it stands.

He can have all the meetings with his agents and the ECB, but the fact is he and he alone needs to walk into that England dressing room or wherever he can speak to the whole team, and, man to man apologise for being an a*se and try to regain the respect and trust of his team mates.

As it is, Taylor looks a fantastic prospect and Bairstow stepped up to the mark scoring 95, when most including me wrote him off before he hit a ball.

England have people capable of stepping into KP's test spot and succeeding. I'm sorry KP fan but you can not support KP anymore in this saga, what he had done is cross the line and back stab his team mates and that is unforgivable, unless he man to man apologises and then its up to the England team whether or not they feel they can trust him again and he can change his ways.

martyr wrote:But the fact is he slagged off his team mates to friends in the side they are locked in a fiersome battle with on who will be world no.1. That is almost unforiveable and as much as you can say 'its all what matters on the field' you need to be mentally prepared out there on the field, and with KP in the camp its highly unlikely preparation would be perfect as it stands.

.

LOL yes it's KP and only KP's singe handed responsibilty to think about the BIG SERIES..
ECB has no responsibility to iun the light of preparations for the big series....ensure dirty laundry is not washed in public....

where did the leaks come from ?
what are the contents of the sms...why no official confirmation on conetnt is made ?

why ECB apperaed more intent on ruibbing KP's nose in public...instead of keeping a lid on things till the big series was over.

Oh come on KP fan, wake up will you he slagged off his team mates and thye have tried to disguise it as banter. If he truly hadn't said anything offensive about team mates, never mind the captain, he should have publicly come out and said 'These are untrue, I would never slag off my team mates who I have the utmost respect for' or something along those lines.

I'm not saying the ECB are the angles in all this. It should never have been handled the way it has, should have all been done behind closed doors, but KP has shot himself in the foot and I think even he realises what a Holly Wilaboobie he has made out of himself.

martyr wrote:Oh come on KP fan, wake up will you he slagged off his team mates and thye have tried to disguise it as banter. If he truly hadn't said anything offensive about team mates, never mind the captain, he should have publicly come out and said 'These are untrue, I would never slag off my team mates who I have the utmost respect for' or something along those lines.

I'm not saying the ECB are the angles in all this. It should never have been handled the way it has, should have all been done behind closed doors, but KP has shot himself in the foot and I think even he realises what a Holly Wilaboobie he has made out of himself.

there are 2 issues:

1) KP issue ( whether leaks or sms etc) is NOT becaue of KP........but because of ECB............ KP didn't want any of this to become public......ECB schemed putting settling score withhim ahead of the series.

2) The Loss of No.1 is because of agenda based team slections......whihc has nothing to do with KP

PS* do you defnitively know the content of sms....or are you just asusming

Of course KP made an absolute idiot of himself throughout the saga with turns and twists and demands. But one thing that has to be noted is that the ECB so far has not formaly requested the South African team management for the contents of the controversial texts. All that we have are unconfirmed newspaper reports.

England has put down 9 chances in this series.....and Monty ain't even playing....and no one is asking for anderson's head like they would have had it been Monty....Flower has diffrent rules for diffrent player.
also it is being implied that Flower may have picked an unfit Swann.


Agnew below confirms the 90-10 standing of England to save the game...

England v South Africa: Dropped catches cost sloppy England
By Jonathan Agnew
BBC cricket correspondent at Lord's England face a huge task to save the final Test, let alone win it.

It is a task that is likely to be beyond them, as South Africa have outplayed them in this series and deserve to take over as the number one side in Test cricket.

Although England's bowlers kept their discipline on the fourth day, the difference between the sides was illustrated when James Anderson dropped AB de Villiers.

By my reckoning, that is the ninth chance that Andrew Strauss's team have put down in the series, which is an astonishing number over three matches.

It was a costly drop too, as Hashim Amla and De Villiers were able to build a fifth-wicket partnership of 95 at a time when England were desperate for wickets.


In the context of the series, those drops have proved more problematic because of the way South Africa have batted.

The tourists have sold their wickets dearly, which can't always be said of the home side.

That is one of the reasons that you feel this chase will probably be out of England's reach, whereas if South Africa were faced with this target, they may have more of a chance.

England may also have expected more than the four wickets that Graeme Swann has taken in this series, but he bowled well today, without a great deal of luck - he was the bowler when Anderson spilled De Villiers - and there remain questions over whether he is being troubled by that elbow injury.

and Boycott minces no words....
as I wrote on the otehr thread.......if Eng crossses 200 and 250 score respectively I will give them some credit...
Draw would be a miracle...
and a win beyond a miracle now....

so much so for a happy dressing romm


Analysis
Geoffrey Boycott
Ex-England batsman & Test Match Special summariser "We'd like England to do it, but they've not got a cat in hell's chance. Even if they hadn't lost those wickets, South Africa wouldn't let them do it.

I doubt any team will be successful on a consistent basis if there is discord amongst the players.

You can hide your ill feelings towards a fellow player for only so long. When things go well it is easier to hide, when things start going south it is not that easy any longer.

It has to do with mindset and focus, cricket is a concentration game (from the little I know about cricket) and if your mind is cluttered with negative thoughts it becomes increasingly more difficult to focus on the job at hand.

It goes towards attitude.

From an outsiders perspective KP has taken things to far, whether he was dropped to make it clear to him that he needs to alter his attitude, or whether it is permanent, I don't beleive for one second Andy Flower is a fool.

We lost it in the first test!

We lost by dropping 8 catches in this series. It really has been schoolboy, amateur cricket for the most part.

You simply cannot allow the likes of Amla and de Villiers two lives in every innings they play.

Pathetic all round from England, where they've shown themselves to be a distinctly average cricket team in the main.

I heard on the news that Pietersen sent a text telling Steyn where to bowl to Strauss. Steyn no doubt knows but if correct then it's pretty underhand and he deserved to be dropped.
Pietersen walks into our team on talent alone but I really do think England are better off without him, long term.

Firstly as I said in an other thread, you can't pick the 11 and then the captain. It just doesn't work, the captain is an important part of a cricket side and if it is constantly changing there will never be a stable dressing room which is needed to be successful.

Secondly you sound like Piers Morgan having a moan about Strauss, yes he has been poor lately and his fielding positions have been head scratchingly confussing however what KP did was underhand and just plain stupid. Put yourself in Andy Flowers position, and look at the history KP has of falling out with team mates and coaches. Their are plenty of stories of his time at Hampshire when he fell out with key members of the team, also I seem to remember him getting sacked as captain after the back me or sack me incident with Moores. KP is far from innocent in this matter, no matter how good someone is if you are going to talk about your team mates behind their backs and to the opposition then you don't deserve your place in the team.

hampo171 wrote:Firstly as I said in an other thread, you can't pick the 11 and then the captain. It just doesn't work, the captain is an important part of a cricket side and if it is constantly changing there will never be a stable dressing room which is needed to be successful.

Secondly you sound like Piers Morgan having a moan about Strauss, yes he has been poor lately and his fielding positions have been head scratchingly confussing however what KP did was underhand and just plain stupid. Put yourself in Andy Flowers position, and look at the history KP has of falling out with team mates and coaches. Their are plenty of stories of his time at Hampshire when he fell out with key members of the team, also I seem to remember him getting sacked as captain after the back me or sack me incident with Moores. KP is far from innocent in this matter, no matter how good someone is if you are going to talk about your team mates behind their backs and to the opposition then you don't deserve your place in the team.

--I agree in parts with the underlined parts....that KP is not completely innocent...that he has acted confused and some might even say looked stupid with all his about turns.
I don't agree with the part in Italics..

--KP cannot be blamed and made a scape goat for the situation where it stands today.
-- If a fair analysis of the situation is done..then those leaking the info into media must go...they created the ruckus in public...and engulfed the entire nation and the team wen defending No.1 was paramount
--Also you cannot clap with one hand.....KP is not the all and end all of problem in dressing room........he is diffrent...but diffrent does not mean wrong all the time.......althouhg the bunch that are alike in the dressing room and find him diffrent make him a target...or atleast make it appear to him that he is a target.

Flower and ECB's job is man management.
The have to be held accountable for letting KP be targetted or feel targetted...and not addresing his grievances in private when he felt he was being targetted....to the extent that he broke down publicly.

--KP is who he is...he his high maintenance...was clear within first 2 years.....if ECB didn't want a high mantenance player... they should have parted ways with him then.
But they did not.....confirming they were willing to invest manitenance time in him...because of the value he brings...
Knowing all of that they even made him the captain......
But since Flower took over........and Flower was successful and Flower's ego took over...ECB stopped spending the manitenance time.....and immediatelly KP was either targetted or felt targetted.

--KP hasNOT chnaged....he remains the same fundamental person...with all his flaws and strengths that ECB made a decision to keep, invest him, make him even the captain........ECB changed in the last year or so under the Flower regime and decided to dump him and not spend on hsi maintenance.

and debacle is for all to see.....

Part in Italics...slection of a captain.

can captaincy make a diffrence to the outcome ?...yes when you have an Imran, Ganguly or Brearley...that with their passion/drive leadership ( Imran and ganguly)....or with their intellect ( Brearley).......can get so much more out of their remaining 10 players...that they more than compensate for their own form.

Strauss fits in neitehr of the categories above.....

More so the Englands set-up currently is such that Flower is the most imporatnt man in an England game...like an off-field captain...with the onfield captain an executioner of a daily script.

and Cook has been handpicked to fit in the same mould of Flower-Strauss...and not much would change if they replace Strauss with Cook.