Ep4
Transcript
00:00Cricket's a team game made up of individuals, don't treat every single person the same.
00:11From Moores through to Taylor, Strauss, Pryor, Flower, where does it end?
00:15At some stage you're not thinking, it could be me Kev.
00:20The whole team was just fragmented I'll be honest, the team seemed to be chopped to pieces.
00:25The amount of briefing from inside the England camp about Kevin Peterson was pathetic.
00:31Why does Kevin have to be best mates with his team mates?
00:34I know Kevin, he does hold a grudge, he was bad for the team at that point, we got rid
00:38of him.
00:39Guys were crying in the dressing room because of the abuse they were taking from the bowlers.
00:43Who won from the Kevin Peterson debacle?
00:46Everybody lost.
00:47A lot of people are still very raw and wounded about the whole thing.
00:55Playing cricket for England is the pinnacle of any cricketer's career and I want an opportunity
01:03to do that again as soon as possible.
01:05Up and over, what a way to get to 100, what a talent he is.
01:14Having been successfully reintegrated into the England team following the Texgate scandal
01:19and now playing under new captain Alistair Cooke, Peterson helped England retain the
01:24Ashes with a 3-0 victory on home soil.
01:27Hi folks, my name's Kevin Peterson, you'd better believe it.
01:34But in a year which saw back to back Ashes, England arrived in Australia three months
01:38later and things went horribly wrong.
01:43Let's get on to the final chapter, Australia.
01:46Before we talk about you the individual, it was also the final chapter for that team,
01:50that era.
01:51Did you see that coming as a team or was that, you know, you turn up at the Gabbatoir and
01:56Mitchell Johnson's bowling like that and you go, oh wow, we're in trouble here.
01:59No, I didn't see that coming as a team.
02:02What I saw coming as a team was we weren't wanting to engage in change.
02:07It needed to be Flowers' way and that's the only way.
02:11I wouldn't say it was the most welcoming of environments.
02:14Quite tough if you were the new guy coming in.
02:16If you weren't part of the playing XI, you know, you were referred to as the bench.
02:21You know, the bench can clean up the bottles, the bench can do, you know, you kind of felt
02:25there was a, yeah, like a massive division between the guys who weren't playing and the
02:29guys that were playing, which disappointed me.
02:32You didn't rate Flower as a coach, why?
02:34I thought he was a mood hoover, that's what I thought he was.
02:37What do you mean by that?
02:38He's the kind of bloke that came in the room and immediately the mood would just go.
02:45Just the way that he engaged with me from the start, he just completely lost me.
02:50He didn't think I cared.
02:52He challenged me on so many different things, which I just thought, dude, I don't need you
02:57in my life.
02:58Cricket's a team game made up of individuals.
03:01Don't treat every single person the same.
03:07Cricket is a curious game, it is a game of individuals, you can't get away from that.
03:13Obviously there's a team framework that you need to buy into.
03:19I would say on the spectrum it's more a game of individuals than say rugby or football
03:23and matches are won by great performances from great players, so you need great players
03:28in any team.
03:29But of course that balance of bringing the two together is always where the issues lie.
03:38To this day, has anyone ever told you what specifically you did wrong on that Ashes tour?
03:44What do you think you did wrong?
03:45Apparently I played really bad shots in Melbourne.
03:47Oh, he's bowled in.
03:48It was an outrageous slug from Peterson.
03:53And I whistled, I don't remember whistling.
03:55Whistling thing's an odd one, isn't it?
03:57Because if you're dropped as an England cricketer for whistling in the dressing room, sounds
04:01a bit odd.
04:02If you're 3-0 down in an Ashes series and the captain is trying to give him an up and
04:06out and speech and there's pressure on everyone, and your best cricketer that everyone's looking
04:11at in the dressing room is stood in the corner whistling away.
04:14Was I?
04:15That would wind me up a little bit.
04:16Whistling I thought was when I walked off the field.
04:20That's what I thought.
04:21Maybe I was staring out.
04:22Staring out of windows?
04:23Possibly.
04:24I mean, are you going to really cross if one of your teammates is just staring around because
04:28you know that he can't freaking stand a team meeting and you're talking about top of off
04:31and all that garbage?
04:34I don't think he would, Ness.
04:35If you as captain, if I'd sat in the back of that room whistling while you're doing
04:38a team meeting, it wouldn't have got in the press because I wouldn't have left the room.
04:41You'd have knocked me head off.
04:43So when you've got the supposedly best player in the team doing that, an act of absolute
04:48defiance towards the captain, that alone would be enough for me to say, right, that's it
04:52for you, pal.
04:53I would react very toughly, very hard, like a proper leader should.
04:57I wouldn't tolerate it, but I wouldn't want to lose my best player.
05:01I wouldn't self-harm.
05:03I wouldn't commit cricket suicide.
05:09The issue at that stage was that you had a senior player who had got disconnected from
05:14the team.
05:15Paul Downton said that he saw a player in Petersen that was disengaged with the team.
05:20Did you see that from the commentary box?
05:22I just saw a team that had disintegrated more than any other England team that I'd seen.
05:285-0 and an utter disintegration.
05:32Everybody starts to look for reasons why.
05:34I don't believe it was just Kevin Petersen who was disengaged.
05:37The whole team had just fragmented, I'll be honest.
05:41I think the team seemed to have been shot to pieces.
05:44I think from that, I think the first innings of the first Test match, Mitchell Johnson
05:48and Ryan Harris were outstanding in that series, I thought.
05:52You know, I just felt that it was almost, right, this is the perfect chance to blame
05:55Kev, you know, because he's been a bit of a prat.
05:59I was on that tour as a broadcaster and the amount of briefing around the back in the
06:04press room from inside the England camp about Kevin Petersen was pathetic.
06:11It was pathetic.
06:12It was like, just focus on playing.
06:14Play better.
06:15Can't be blaming one person.
06:17Why was I disengaged?
06:18What had lit up for three, four, five years before that?
06:22Don't you think that a strong leader or a strong coach would have been able to say,
06:25You know what?
06:26What's been happening in this dressing room is ****.
06:29Do you think Duncan Fletcher would have allowed that to happen?
06:32Duncan Fletcher was England's greatest coach.
06:34Flower won three Ashes.
06:35Flower won the only ICC World he went to ever won.
06:40Flower won in India.
06:42Was he coach when you won in India?
06:44He had amazing players.
06:45Flower took you to number one side in the world.
06:46He had amazing players, Nass.
06:48He had Cook on fire, Strauss on fire, Trott on fire, I was on fire, Bell was on fire,
06:53Pryor was on fire, Anderson, Broad, Swan on fire.
06:56I mean, you name it, they were on fire.
07:02Kevin Peterson won't have it that Andy Flower was an exceptional coach.
07:06Given the fact what Andy Flower achieved as coach, do you not see that as remarkable?
07:12No, I don't because I know Kevin and he does hold a grudge and he does,
07:15when he decides to destroy someone, he goes for the full cavalry approach.
07:21Andy Flower is and was an exceptional coach.
07:24When we won in 2010, he was lauded as a genius,
07:27but being that very pernickety, everything needs to be absolutely spot on.
07:31When we lost, it was, oh, he's too interesting in detail.
07:37He had a very, very exceptional way of communicating with people,
07:40very clear ideas and philosophies on the game of cricket.
07:44To say Andy wasn't a great coach would be a long way off the mark.
07:47There's so many players that played under him, who loved playing under him,
07:51who still go back and ask him for advice to this day.
07:56That just doesn't happen if you're not an exceptional coach.
07:59England went to number one in the world rankings.
08:01They looked a proper unit.
08:03How much you give credit to the coach, how much you give credit to the captain,
08:06how much you give credit to the fine players that are under their command,
08:10that's difficult to analyse.
08:12But if you're going to blame coaches when things go wrong,
08:15you have to give them some credit when you see a team perform as England did in that period.
08:23The other thing that's really winding you up is what you feel is the bullying culture
08:27amongst those bowlers, that when a fielder misfeels, certain people get a volley of abuse.
08:33Yeah, I mean, I said to Jimmy Henderson once in a Test match, I said,
08:36the only thing that I'm really scared of is passing the ball back to you from at mid-off.
08:41I said, because if it goes below your knee or drops on the floor,
08:44you just give me that look and you just stare at me.
08:47Should I have ever been in a position to say that to one of my bowlers?
08:51If you dropped a catch, you know, getting yelled at by bowlers,
08:54it wasn't a great display to the opposition, more importantly.
08:57I remember after we played the Adelaide Test match where we got hammered,
09:01Graham Swan had quite a bit to say about, you know,
09:03the batters having to pull their finger out and all this stuff.
09:06And I think even Graham Gooch had to kindly remind him that, you know,
09:09well, mate, you're capable of scoring Test rounds too, mate, why don't you pull yours out?
09:13You've been in dressing rooms, batters, bowlers,
09:15that's the oldest divide in any cricket team.
09:17And it's always, it's never bullying, it's never an actual split in a team,
09:21it's cajoling, it's, you know, I've got my boots on again,
09:23I've only just taken them off, what's wrong with you lot?
09:25That's what it was in the dressing room.
09:27That team had a brilliant team spirit.
09:30Guys were crying in the dressing room because of the abuse
09:32they were taking from the bowlers.
09:34Crying, you think a guy should cry in a dressing room?
09:36You're playing for your country.
09:38Do you think guys should hate playing for your country that much?
09:41Some guys didn't want to get selected for England
09:43because of what Broad, Anderson, Pryor, Swan were like.
09:47How would you respond to that?
09:48Fiction.
09:49If anyone thought that me, Jimmy, Matt, Pryor were bullies,
09:52they're in the wrong sport, they shouldn't be playing sport,
09:55we were not bullies.
10:00You completely fell out with Pryor on that trip, why?
10:04He was dropped and he was just the most negative person around those dressing rooms.
10:09He was talking about finishing his career,
10:11he was talking about how much he was hating it.
10:13And when somebody's completely bombarding negativity in and around,
10:16then I'm out, Ness, and I've got no interest.
10:19Matt was the team leader.
10:21He was the guy who kept everything together.
10:24I mean, Matt did everything.
10:25He reached out to Kevin way more than anyone else did.
10:28He was Flower's little go-to man, little spokesman,
10:30who would go back and tell Flower everything that was happening in the dressing room.
10:34I think Matt Pryor felt it was his role to basically pull Kevin up
10:38when he stepped out of line.
10:42It wasn't just Kev, that was Matt's job.
10:44If he saw somebody he thought was drifting from the team,
10:46not being part of a cohesive unit, he would go to me,
10:48go to the hotel room, phone them up, go for a coffee, whatever, talk to them.
10:51That's what he'd do with Kev.
10:52I certainly wouldn't do that with Kev.
10:54I'd wash my hands with...
10:56After the texting thing with Strauss,
10:58I just thought if he's batting and scoring runs, fine,
11:00but I'm not eating or drinking with him.
11:04But Matt would go out of his way.
11:06It came to a head after the Melbourne Test match.
11:08Yeah.
11:09There was a team meeting called.
11:11Who spoke the most at that team meeting?
11:13Pryor, a bloke who had just been dropped,
11:16who was in the worst space ever known to man,
11:18and every single person would tell you that.
11:20I mean, he said, excuse my French here,
11:22"[Bleep], Flower, this is our team."
11:25Did you agree with that? Did he say that?
11:27Yeah, but I think we then all engaged in this, what you've just said,
11:31and then everything that happened in the meeting went to Flower.
11:34Actually, that is what happened.
11:36Yeah, because I got quizzed about it in Sydney two days later.
11:39I got hammered about it in his room two days later.
11:41Was there anything in your persona that looked ahead a little bit?
11:46There are people who play the game.
11:48Kevin. Yeah, I never played the game.
11:50We're losing the Ashes.
11:51We're going to lose the Ashes 5-0.
11:53They're going to look for a scapegoat.
11:54I'm already in trouble.
11:56Most of this team don't like me.
11:57The coach doesn't like me.
11:58Keep your head down and just hope to be there for the next Test match.
12:02By taking him on, you gave him the option to axe you.
12:05But, Ness, I thought that I was actually...
12:07I took Flower on in his room, 100%, but I was helping Cookie.
12:14Not only had England been hammered 5-0 down under,
12:17the tour also saw Jonathan Tropp take a break from cricket
12:21due to mental health reasons,
12:23while Graham Swan retired from the game altogether.
12:27It's time for someone else to strap themselves in
12:29and enjoy the ride like I have done.
12:32In the aftermath, Pedersen was dropped from the side.
12:35He would never play for England again.
12:38Would you have axed Pedersen after the Ashes?
12:41No.
12:42I'd have axed him after he'd text the opposing team.
12:47We were robbed by Kevin Pedersen's sacking from England team
12:50of at least five, possibly seven years,
12:53of the best batsman I have seen for England in my lifetime.
12:57I also resented the fact that he had been scapegoated
13:00for an appalling tour down under,
13:02which, frankly, was a failure right across the board
13:06by the whole team, and there was no explanation given.
13:13Isn't it just a classic case of when you're playing well,
13:16your team are like that,
13:17and when Mitchell Johnson's coming in and rolling you,
13:20the team starts to disintegrate?
13:22Yeah, that's what happens with sport.
13:23It's exactly what happens with sport,
13:25but the best coaches and the best man managers
13:28are able to make sure that it doesn't go as pear-shaped as it did.
13:32It is the job of the captain and coach to manage difficult people,
13:35and particularly when the difficult person
13:39might be a great player or a match-winning player.
13:42But there may be a point where you have to say enough is enough,
13:46and clearly they felt that was reached.
13:49Why does Kevin have to be best mates with his team-mates?
13:52Does he have to be? He was a top scorer on that trip.
13:55Yeah, but he wasn't Kevin Pedersen averaging 60, 70 on that trip.
14:00So you drop the best player
14:01because he didn't get as many runs as you wanted him to get,
14:04but you keep someone who's not as good as him
14:07because he's a nice bloke in the dressing room.
14:10That's the weirdest selection policy I've ever seen.
14:13I think people forget that he was on a final warning after Techscape.
14:16I think he was a bit of a waning talent as well.
14:18He'd had a few injuries. He had to come home from New Zealand in 13.
14:21I just think it was possible to be really disappointed
14:25and sad that this was the end after watching such a rare talent.
14:28But I'd also think England had hit rock bottom.
14:30Do you know what? This is the best thing to do.
14:33And I think that point got forgotten in some of the hysteria afterwards,
14:36a lot of which was generated by Piers Morgan.
14:39All the supposed crimes thrown at Kevin Pedersen
14:42are things which should be easily dealt with
14:45by a confident, strong leader in a good environment.
14:49And I think the England dressing room lost control of itself
14:54because it wasn't led properly.
15:00It's obviously still very raw.
15:02Oh, really?
15:03Well, not for you, but for some others.
15:05You know, Matt doesn't want to talk about it.
15:07Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, obviously Cookie, Andy Flower.
15:10There's still people who are very hurt about what happened
15:13and what's been written since.
15:15Yeah, Cookie especially.
15:16I mean, he got his friends in the media to try and destroy Cookie,
15:20who, as you know, is one of the most gracious, modest,
15:22humble blokes I've ever met in my life.
15:24And how Cookie reacted to it is phenomenal, I think.
15:27He didn't bite back. He didn't get into a stupid PR war with him.
15:31He just said, no, the story is how it is.
15:33You know, he was bad for the team at that point.
15:35We got rid of him.
15:38Do you think that Piers Morgan was a help or a hindrance to Kevin Pedersen?
15:42I think he was a massive hindrance.
15:43I felt that a lot of people would have had a lot more sympathy for Kevin
15:46if this guy didn't sort of barge his way in.
15:49And he was the one who was doing the bullying, if anybody.
15:54Do you feel at times you may have gone too far,
15:56you know, calling the England captain a repulsive little weasel?
16:00His wife ends up in tears, et cetera.
16:03Do you understand the power of what you and Kevin do
16:05in that sort of situation?
16:06Yes, and it was emotional and over-the-top,
16:08and I probably used language that was a little bit too inflammatory.
16:11Certainly didn't want to upset Mrs Cook, I don't know her,
16:13but I heard that and that didn't make me feel good.
16:16However, I would argue that Alistair Cook,
16:19in the meeting in which Kevin Pedersen was sacked from England,
16:22behaved like a cowardly weasel.
16:24He didn't address a single word to his player.
16:26He let Paul Downton do all the talking.
16:28It was all over in five minutes.
16:29He stared at the ground for most of it, apparently.
16:32I'm sorry, that's not the way a proper captain should behave.
16:36Actually, I think that the Twitter campaign, which I waged, backfired.
16:41I think it had the opposite effect to what I desired.
16:43I think if I had my time again, I would have been more moderate about it
16:46because I think it got people's backs up.
16:51What was your relationship like with Alistair Cook
16:54and what's it been like since?
16:55Well, it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.
16:57And I was there to help Cookie, and I was helping Cookie.
17:00It was absolutely fantastic.
17:02I think I can safely say that I have regrets about it.
17:04I don't think the decision was wrong,
17:06but obviously the fallout and how it wasn't great for English cricket.
17:09Alistair Cook said when he retired recently
17:11that he felt that that period was handled badly.
17:15It was a very hard one to manage correctly.
17:17I don't think it was managed correctly.
17:19I don't think it was deliberately,
17:20but I do think Alistair bore the brunt of it,
17:24and that was unfair on him.
17:26As England captain, you are involved in decisions,
17:29but you're not fundamentally...
17:31You don't make those decisions.
17:32Those decisions about who gets picked for the team,
17:35who's got central contract, all that stuff, are made above your head.
17:38So I did feel a little bit of a scapegoat there.
17:40Do you not see a pattern developing here?
17:42Right from your initial schoolboy coach,
17:46who you didn't rate as a coach,
17:47through to Natal and fighting the system there,
17:50through to Notts, through to Galleon,
17:52through to Moores, through to Taylor, Strauss, Pryor, Flower.
17:56Where does it end?
17:57At some stage, you don't think,
17:59it could be me, Kev.
18:00Yeah, and absolutely.
18:01100%.
18:03We're all different, Nasser.
18:05We're all completely different.
18:07I'm not going to be friends with everybody.
18:09Everybody's not going to be friends with me.
18:11And it's just a case of accepting, understanding,
18:14and just moving on.
18:16But I wanted to move in a direction
18:18where I needed to achieve what I wanted to achieve.
18:21And it rubbed people up the wrong way.
18:25It did what it did.
18:31The whole thing's been very messy.
18:33It hasn't been English cricket's greatest time.
18:36You know, there are a lot of people that are still very raw
18:39and wounded about the whole thing.
18:41Kevin being one of them, and there are other people
18:43that perhaps haven't been so public,
18:44also feel very wounded and raw as well.
18:49Who won from the Kevin Peterson debacle?
18:51Everybody lost.
18:52Kevin lost five years of his England career.
18:56Alistair Cook lost because the team got worse
18:58and it affected him.
19:00England cricket fans, I think, were cheated
19:02out of their best, most flamboyant player.
19:05It was a lose-lose for everybody.
19:08Kevin Peterson and English cricket
19:10reached the end of the road together.
19:13Certainly when I came in, bearing in mind
19:15he'd been out of the team for 18 months,
19:18I felt it was a step back.
19:20And my job as director of cricket
19:21was to take English cricket forward.
19:23It came down fundamentally to what became a lack of trust.
19:29You know, KP didn't trust a lot of people.
19:31The ECB probably didn't trust some of his teammates.
19:34Some of his teammates probably didn't trust him.
19:36That's not a rich environment to play a team sport in.
19:43It was a sad, but perhaps predictable end
19:46to the career of one of England's greatest ever cricketers.
19:50A new life in the South African bush beckons
19:53and in typical KP fashion, he isn't doing things by halves.
19:58You go through everything that we've achieved
20:00in English cricket and Peterson is right at the forefront.
20:04I'm a team player.
20:05That's the first time I've ever heard that, to be honest.
20:08I think he'll be remembered as a slightly divisive character
20:10that fell out with people,
20:12but by God, can he play the game of cricket?
20:14Two weeks ago, I walked into two rhino
20:16that had just been killed.
20:17It's ridiculous what he's gone and done.
20:19And now he's trying to change the world on wildlife.