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Kevin Pietersen England future is dependent on his attitude - Lawrence Booth

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It's been a madcap month for followers of English cricket. Kevin Pietersen is on the naughty step, Andrew Strauss has graduated to real life, the Test reign is over and the Alastair Cook era has begun.

Oh, and the armchair critics have had a ball. But what have we learned? The Top Spin takes a deep breath – and a, er, provocative look back.

All change: Strauss has exited all forms of cricket, but can Pietersen make a return?

    More from Lawrence Booth...   THE TOP SPIN: It was a thrilling win but England can't bat away concerns over plodding top order 20/05/13   THE TOP SPIN: Prior's award is a deserved reward for being England's Mr Selfless 14/05/13   THE TOP SPIN: Australia will want to summon up the spirit of '89 but England should leave it well alone 30/04/13   The Top Spin: Weather warning for England's spinners - Is this a golden era for Swann and Panesar? 23/04/13   THE TOP SPIN: Compton goes back to the future to show that cricket's past and present can form a solid partnership 16/04/13   THE TOP SPIN: Let's hope there's a happy medium pace between slow turn of county game and 90mph barrage from the IPL 08/04/13   THE TOP SPIN: Hunted England wear haunted look as eyes of the world see them struggle in New Zealand 25/03/13   The Top Spin: It's the end of an era as throwback Blackwell calls it a day (and ensures he will be a permanent one-cap wonder) 19/03/13   The Top Spin: England slow out of the blocks again... but second innings shows they've nipped it in the bud 12/03/13   VIEW FULL ARCHIVE   There's nothing like a platitude, is there?

There sure isn't. Try this one: the best teams know how to manage their most difficult players. Shucks. If only Andy Flower had realised!

While some have pontificated from afar about the nuts and bolts of man-management, cheerfully applying general principles to a complex situation, Flower and Co have spent the past few months dedicating more energy to one cricketer than even Don Bradman would have deserved.

England did not become No 1 by making it up as they went along. They did so by squeezing every last drop out of a very good – but not great – team.

Boring though it sounds, they specialised in sensible decisions. The dropping of Kevin Pietersen was not carried out with a jerk of the knee. Only team insiders know when enough is enough. The rest is just theorising.

But England would have won the Lord's Test if KP had been playing!

Probably not, Piers. Pietersen might have scored more than Jonny Bairstow's first-innings 95, but his career stats suggest he had only a one-in-five chance of doing so. And the fourth-innings run-chase?

Well, KP's fourth-innings Test average is 40, and only one of his 21 Test hundreds was made in the fourth innings. Bairstow made 54. Again, we're into the realms of wishful thinking. There really is no cricketer as great as one who isn't playing...

Still, all those leaks, eh? Eh!?

Oh, for a leak from the ECB! According to sections of Twitter, any news story published on the Pietersen affair in the past month was yet another scandalous example of the ECB cherry-picking their journalists. If only.

What looks like a leak is usually – not always, but usually – the result of persistent journalism. And if I explain any more, I'll have to kill you.

Have you heard the news? Despite Strauss's departure, Pietersen's return to England set-up isn't guaranteed

Wouldn't Strauss still be captain if Textgate hadn't happened?

Doubt it. Strauss said himself at last week's press conference he had been thinking about retiring for the previous 'six to 12 months'.

His close friend Angus Fraser has written that Strauss had been discussing the possibility with him over a pint some time ago, well before Pietersen's latest stint as enfant terrible. Like Flower, he is not a man inclined to the rash decision.

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Conspiracists love the idea that Pietersen helped bring down Strauss, but conspiracists tend to ignore the evidence. Strauss had played 100 Tests, 50 of them as captain. He was no longer scoring any meaningful runs. England had lost six Tests out of 11 since ascending to No 1. He's 35.

Next up was a trip to India, where things were not going to get any easier. If Pietersen featured at all in his list of reasons for retiring, it would have been somewhere near the bottom.

Now that Strauss has gone, Pietersen's chances of a return have improved, right?

Not quite yet. But the England set-up is a pragmatic place, and Cook knows that Pietersen's presence in India paves the way, in theory, for some Colombo-style match-winning genius. After all, what's not to like about a top seven of Cook, Trott, Bell, Pietersen, Morgan, Bairstow and Prior?

First things first, however. Pietersen has to apologise properly and in person, not just for the texts, but for generally annoying the hell out of his team-mates. And he has to promise to behave. If that sounds like the language of the class room, then – well – you tailor your vocabulary accordingly.

Who's to blame? Strauss's list of reasons for retiring is long, KP's involvement would feature near the bottom

And what about Pietersen's own gripes?

Flower has admitted he should have handled the fake Twitter account better. The message to the dressing room should have been: why tease a guy who doesn't enjoy being teased?

But it seems fairly clear that the tittering was a symptom of a wider malaise, and it's the malaise that needs addressing.

Pietersen can do this if he shakes off his own sense of grievance. His England future is more dependent on his attitude than he may realise.

Does the Top Spin want to see Pietersen play for England again?

Yes please.

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WASLet's hear it for Mankad

As a Northamptonshire supporter who has never quite got over the last ball of the 1981 NatWest Trophy final, when the non-striker – Geoff Miller of Derbyshire – was halfway down the pitch before the delivery had even been sent down, we've always had a sneaking regard for a Mankading or two.

And so the Top Spin couldn't quite believe our ears when Surrey captain Gareth Batty was forced to apologise after Murali Kartik had enacted the very deed to get rid of Somerset’s Alex Barrow in last week's Championship game at Taunton.

Not only do the Laws make provision for the Mankading: it is a necessary corrective for batsmen who plainly care nothing for the so-called spirit of the game when they wander out of their crease in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage. Kartik, it seems, had already warned Barrow.

So why the bleating? The answer is simple: no other sport, with the possible exception of golf, regards itself quite so smugly as cricket.

Flashpoint: Kartik and Batty were involved in one of the season's more dramatic events

England's bowling all-rounder

Ravi Bopara may have stopped scoring runs ever since he pulled out of Headingley Test squad for personal reasons (that’s 28 runs in seven innings now), but the man just can't help hustling through tidy spells of medium-pace.

Hot on the heels of figures of 10-1-31-1 at The Kia Oval, Bopara took 2 for 34 off nine overs on Sunday at Lord's. Among non-Associate bowlers in 2012, only West Indian Sunil Narine (3.44) has a better economy-rate than Bopara's 3.46. For the wrong reasons, he is becoming hard to drop.

Ghosts of interviews past

There are those who feel Kevin Pietersen has, in part, been a victim of a media witch-hunt. Others wonder whether Pietersen might occasionally help himself.

In an interview with The Cricketer – held before Headingley and the texts but published only last week – he explains how delighted he was to have retired from limited-overs internationals: 'Hey, a game called off in Leeds or 35 degrees on a beach in Portugal? It's a no-brainer.'

So much of a no-brainer that – not long after, faced with the prospect of entire summers spent reflecting on his good fortune on the Algarve – Pietersen promptly made himself available again for ODI and international Twenty20 cricket.

In his now infamous YouTube interview, Pietersen chuckles about his tendency to 'shoot from the hip'. He didn’t need to add that the gun seems forever directed straight at his own foot.

No-brainer? KP removed his name for short-form selection... then promptly changed his mind

Whoa!

Memo to the ICC: the surest way of turning fans against the team rankings is to update them after every single one-day international. In the England-South Africa series, the No 1 spot has already changed hands twice, which may ensure publicity while hacks feel obliged to mention the tussle in their intros but does little for credibility.

Last week England were No 1 until Tuesday, No 2 for most of the rest of the week, then No 1 again by Friday evening. You may have missed the developments if you popped out to put the kettle on. The Test rankings are updated after every series, and as a result are treated with a degree of respect. Why not do the same for one-day cricket?

  More... Trott not badly injured but Buttler called up as cover with batsman a doubt for decider We'd all like to see him back: Bopara and Morgan lead calls for Pietersen return





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