Today’s PSA: The Evils of Text Messaging

Beware: this is no longer the worst thing that can happen while texting

Following on what seems like years of tedious controversy, the England and Wales Cricket Board, in their infinite wisdom, have formally dropped Kevin Pietersen from the England squad for their last Test against South Africa. Whether or not he will be dropped from the team for good, fed to the ECB’s in-house moat of angry crocodiles, or made to do penance dressed in a hair shirt whilst seated upon a bed of rusty nails as the Olympic mascots dance in front of him is yet to be confirmed.

Kevin Pietersen is not an easy man to defend. He is a highly-paid sportsman who says things like, “It’s really tough to be me” (reports that he made the statement while clutching a teddy bear with sapphires for eyes and stuffed with hand-shredded Euro notes remain unsubstantiated) and generally has spent a career being unfailingly willing to tell the world how awesome he is. In more recent days he has accused his teammates of being mean to him and saying nasty things about him on the internet through a parody Twitter account (reports that he made the complaints while drying his tears with a handkerchief made from the skin of rare Tibetan antelopes are unconfirmed).  He also did not win many friends when he announced his retirement from all forms of limited-overs cricket, citing, among other reasons, to combat fatigue and the desire to spend more time with his young family, both of which he could evidently accomplish while playing in the IPL (I could be wrong, since I hate the IPL and do not watch it, but I have a suspicion that the format of the tournament might be limited-overs.) At the press conference after his stellar performace (the only one that anyone in the England team managed) he gave a press conference and somewhat unwisely chose to discuss his issues. If his teammates and the board were upset with him before, he had essentially hit upon the best possible way to make it worse.

Kevin Pietersen is, in short, a man who has issues, and a lot of those issues involve his team-mates, and have incurred the displeasure of the ECB. (Wales is apparently not important enough to merit inclusion in their acronym. Maybe it’s punishment for making generations of news anchors and media pronounce and spell words like Cerrigydrudion and Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.) These issues have been the source of a lot of tiresome controversy of late, most of which has focused on what a disruptive force Pietersen is and how his very public issues have been damaging to team morale and preparation. One would imagine that, seeing as it was moles within the ECB that leaked a lot of the controversial information to the public in the first place, that they might issue some form of apology or claim responsibility for their part in the circus, but, you know, that wasn’t ever going to happen. Giles Clarke was still insisting everything was fine after the Stanford fiasco, after all. This is how he rolls.

Fair to say that the ECB have something of a reputation for being high-handed, shortsighted, and generally kind of ridiculous and inept. This is not really surprising, since most of the world’s cricket boards are the same. (Hi, WICB! Hello, PCB!) How to distinguish themselves? What could they possibly do to prove that they, indeed, stand head and shoulders above the rest?

Sack Kevin Pietersen for “failing to provide proof that he had not sent derogatory texts to the South Africans”? Yeah, that’ll work.

Many people have said that, of course, that’s not the REAL reason KP was sacked. Perhaps, but it’s the reason the ECB chose to give. What this tells us, of course, is that, according to the ECB, they have the right to see any and all of a player’s private communications if they please. Also, that they are monumentally stupid enough to take a step like this based on rumours of text messages that may or may not even exist because no-one has seen them making them, by definition, rumours, but let’s leave that aside for now. Apparently, someone heard that Pietersen had sent texts to members of the South African team saying things that were less than complimentary about Strauss and Andy Flower. Text messages. To other players. Not to the press, not to members of the England team. Private text messages. I’m reasonably sure that not even in murder investigations do they ask you to disprove rumours that you’ve killed the person, nor do can they require you to make private communication available for scrutiny without probable cause.

So, England players, this is a new dawn for you. Planning to text a mate to meet up at Nandos later since it’s been a rough day in the nets? Sorry, that reads suspiciously like disapproval of the ECB’s carefully chosen training regime and player management strategies. Text with photo to tell someone that the 80s called and they want Andrew Strauss’s shirt back? Derogation of the captain! Your best bet, really, is to resort to smoke signals and mime-shows. Or interpretive dance that you can subtly pass off as an unconventional warmup routine. And don’t forget, once a month or so you’ll have to show up at a press conference, smile, and say something along the lines of, “I’m happy we are happy everyone so happy Coach Flower’s the best and we have the warmest bestest kindest most supportive board ever and that’s why I’m smiling so rigidly and talking like this oh god please tell me this looks natural please!”

Enjoy that! And the number 1 ranking that you will totally still be able to hold on to now that this pesky nuisance has been excised from the team. You’ll be unstoppable!

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Sabah wrote 2 articles on this blog.

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