Former England batsman Kevin Pietersen had a stellar career as a batsman and one of the finest to play for England. However, it is no secret that the Natal-born didn’t share an ideal relationship with many of his teammates, including captain Andrew Strauss.
Pietersen had, in fact, sent derogatory opinions about Strauss to his friends in the South African team, the leading of these texts led to his contract suspension by the ECB, for which he had apologised publically.
Former off-spinner Graeme Swann is another of Pietersen’s teammates who weren’t on good terms with the stylish batsman off the field. Swann openly admitted that although he didn’t like Pietersen and vice-versa, they didn’t allow their relationship on the field to be affected by that.
In a conversation with SkySports, Graeme Swann talked about his dislike for Kevin Pietersen but made it clear that they respected each other as cricketers.
“We actually got on better professionally than most other people because we were honest with each other,” Swann told Sky Sports. “We openly disliked each other, but we wanted each other in the team. I wanted a Kevin Pietersen who was scoring runs because he was simply one of the best in the world.”
After a number of controversies, Pietersen’s career came to end following the 2013/14 away Ashes series which England lost 0-5.
Recalling the saga around Pietersen’s leaked conversation with South African players on Andrew Strauss, Swann said, “There were times when there were exterior things like the texting with Andrew Strauss. When you’re getting to the point that you’re having team meetings to discuss, ‘What are we going to do about these text messages that have been sent?’, and the player is saying, ‘I did not send these, it’s complete lies’, and then subsequently, you know he’s sent them and he’s saying ‘Well I did send them because they’re my mates’, that doesn’t help things.
England were thrashed under Pietersen’s before becoming world number 1 under Strauss.
The former off-spinner further added: “There weren’t discernible cliques. We’re a team who got to No.1 in the world, and within a team there are always going to be individuals… 99 per cent of that team were very much in it for the team as well. What we ended up having with Kevin was a situation where he’d been captain before, and he definitely didn’t like the establishment and rules, much like me. We were actually very similar in many ways, me and Kev.”
