Pietersen’s out.

I’m no great fan of KP either, but the quota system seems pretty daft unless someone with better knowledge of the state of cricket in South Africa can show that there is systematic discrimination at present.

Except that in this case there seems to be some evidence that KP actually did personally lose out under the system – another player was being selected ahead of him simply to fulfil the quotas. In which case I think it’s reasonable for him to feel aggrieved, even if you can understand the context in which that was taking place. (Mind you, the bigger problem may have been that they hadn’t at the time worked out that he was better at batting than bowling. He was only about 18, after all.) And you’d only have to ask Jacques Rudolph about the clumsy application of racial quotas at even the top levels of SA cricket in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Also, gotta laugh a bit at the idea that Flintoff (great cricketer that he is) is without vanity. That’s a triumph for PR. Which is what KP is really shit at. Drop a bombshell at ECB headquarters and head off to the wilds of Africa for a holiday? Yep, great tactics there, mate.

“a natural meritocracy like first-class cricket post-apartheid.”

You are joking. Progress in cricket depends very much on the facilities and coaching one has access to in one’s childhood and teenage years (especially where batting is concerned). As these are still very different for whites and blacks even in post-Apartheid South Africa, there’s no “natural meritocracy” involved regardless of whether or not quotas are a useful away of addressing this. KP must have been aware of the existence of reasons for quotas regardless of whether or not he personally agreed with them.

Which is what KP is really shit at

I think it’s more a case of KP not giving a shit.

a 19 year old who has only ever wanted to play cricket

Oh poor soul.

He doesn’t want to think about the wider world, but he wants the wider world to think about him?

Incidentally, looking up Pietersen’s old school, it seems the lad didn’t go short of unearned privileges himself. Funny how many public schoolboys are like that, happy to accept the advantages it gives them but then total meritocrats when it comes to everybody else.

Funny how many public schoolboys are like that, happy to accept the advantages it gives them but then total meritocrats when it comes to everybody else.

Yep, he should have gone to live in a shack in the Veldt the heartless bastard.

Oh poor soul.

Huh? I wasn’t suggesting we put an arm around his shoulder and whisper reassuring words in his privileged ear. I suggested we cut him some slack for, at 19, being pissed off that he was dropped from his team for reasons other than his form or ability and not thinking about the greater good of the quota system.

I’ve always suspected you might have been born middle-aged, Justin.

OTOH, KP really is shit at PR, and his ‘not giving a shit’ might have something to do with that.

That’s pretty much what I meant. He not so much shit at PR, as doesn’t give a shit about what his PR looks like. In other words, he’s not trying to have good PR and failing, if you like.

“taking one for the team” is pretty much the most basic thing a team captain should have a grasp of, if only because he’s likely to to dishing it out a lot at others — if KP had shaken off since being 19, or at least given some minimal thought to, his self-absorbed sense of entitlement, he would be a bit easier to cut slack for

“not giving a shit about PR” doesn’t seem to me an ideal characteristic for a captain, either, though i guess as a flaw it could be trumped by other virtues

I suggested we cut him some slack for, at 19, being pissed off that he was dropped from his team for reasons other than his form or ability and not thinking about the greater good of the quota system.

In the way that he, himself, cuts slack for people who take a different view to him or fail to come up to his standards?

I think he’d take the view that other 19-year-olds were grown men who could take a little bit of criticism. And I think he’d be right.

Yep, he should have gone to live in a shack in the Veldt the heartless bastard.

Do try not to be more wilfully stupid that you have committed yourself to being, eh?

“lesser players” in the sense of “players having a better understanding of how teams work”? the fact that KP is still as a er er grown-up quite bad at this suggests he was no better when 19; seems to me entirely possible he was overlooked NOT because of a rigidly and mindlessly adhered-to quota system, but because someone else — despite being not so gifted individually, physically — was considered a better all-round [1] pick for the good of the team as a whole

i don’t know how fair ejh’s generalisation is about today’s public school ethos [2] but the opposite of “being a total meritocrat except when it comes to yourself” is not “go live on the veldt” but “don’t be a total meritocrat except when it comes to yourself”

1: where “all-round” includes such talents as “thinking about others now and then”
2: in the 19th century the english ones made lots of noise about fair play and the team being greater than the whole, and rather encouraged public service [3] and were quite disapproving of this kind of teenage petulance, hence the phrase “it’s not cricket” etc: possibly it was always just noise however
3: for a rather specific definition of “the public”, obviously

And so we were: and the point (as it should not have been hard even for you to grasp) is that he should have had the maturity to understand why it had happened even if he entirely disagreed with it.

Which is not necessarily an unfair point to make and – you’re correct – I did indeed manage to grasp. My objection – which plainly sailed over your head like one of KP’s hooks – is to the terms in which this point was being couched and a lack of empathy for a 19 yeard old who, at the time, was probably thinking his dreams of playing top-flight cricket were being dashed, to wit, “cut him some slack” means just that; not “I agree with his stance”.

A self-absorbed 19-year old, eh? Whatever next…

Ideally there wouldn’t be a quota system, because there wouldn’t need to be a quota system. Quotas are offensive in the abstract. But in this specific context, if SA cricket can use quotas over the space of, say, one player-generation to (npi) level the playing field, then they’ll have brought about the situation that should have prevailed all along, and the quotas can then be dismantled. In other words, once the decision has been made that quotas are needed, any quota system worth having will spell its own eventual doom. And that’s a good thing. But until that happy day, if the need to undo the damage apartheid did to South African sport means that an occasional Pietersen must face disappointment, then so be it.

But all that said, his personal disappointment is eminently understandable, and he does not deserve criticism for it. (He deserves criticism for his cheap “the blacks took my job” analysis, yes. One might even be tempted to adjudge him a little shit for it. But an absence of little-shitness is not normally a criterion for selection.) There is no contradiction between accepting the necessity of a quota system and the inevitable disappointments it will bring for some, and feeling genuine sympathy for those thus disappointed.

Pietersen’s disappointment might be the necessary if unfortunate by-product of an effort to reverse certain long-lasting effects of a gross multi-generational world-historical crime. It is not, however, punishment for the sin of being a middle class white South African. Those who see it in such terms are shits as little as (if of a different shape and consistency to) Pietersen. I shouldn’t wonder if they were the sort of people who, in other contexts, would extemporaneously bore us all with the argument that league is politically superior to union.

Mitchell. Just to put it ejh’s comments in context, a generation earlier numerous white 19 year olds were deciding to join a struggle for a just South Africa in which, if things went as they wanted to, they expected that it would be incredibly difficult for them to be part of the elite that governed the country, joining a movement in which, as whites, they could not expect to be part of the leadership, etc. Some of them risking their lives. KP was not a “typical” 19 year old; he was a typical self-absorbed person with a sense of entitlement. In England, I encountered almost nobody like that in my last secondary school. College was quite a shock.

I’m sure that numerous sport stars, some of whom I am sure I enjoy and perhaps even revere, have obnoxious political opinions…

That’s why I support Sevilla.

. Progress in cricket depends very much on the facilities and coaching one has access to in one’s childhood and teenage years (especially where batting is concerned).

Well yeah, that is pretty much what the word meritocracy means. That childhood coaching presumably genuinely increased his cricketing abilities, his ‘merit’. You can see that merit on the pitch if you know what to look for, or measure it in objective numbers in a way that is closer to capturing the truth than with virtually any other human activity.

As a consequence of that demonstrated cricketing merit, he gets to be a member of the modern equivalent of the aristocracy.

Even a perfect meritocracy isn’t particularly close to being a fair society…

It is a cliché to say that two wrongs don’t make a right, but sometimes clichés become clichés because they are so bleeding obvious.

If he was better than any of the black players who took his place, then he was dropped becasue of the quota system.

No, not obviously the case at all; Pietersen was at the time, an offspin bowler who could bat a bit. If, say, the black players picked under the quota system were three fast bowlers and the wicketkeeper, he wasn’t.

So I take it the mustard stain on the side of his whites had nothing to do with it?

“I don’t really see any reason to believe that Pietersen was unfairly done out of any places.”

Did he make here fairly, or because of the quota system? Enquiring minds and all…

<i<all of whom would, in a straight choice*, plump for Pietersen over Prince all day and every day.

But they would not, I think, consider him the better “team player”, which was the term very clearly used.

I’m simply saying he doesn’t deserve castigation for a reaction he gave as a 19-year old cricketer who percevied, rightly or wrongly, that he was the victim of the quota system.

Well yes he does. I remember being 19, and I distinctly remember being able to spot a whinging arsehole with a massive sense of privilege then. Furthermore, Pietersen does, actually (in his autobiography) do quite a bit of castigating British teenagers for whining and having an excessive sense of entitlement (apparently due to their not being beaten by their parents), so he is on my side of this issue, not yours.

And “at present” would include anyone in the current playing generation affected by discrimination and inequality since a young age, as was obviously the case a mere handful of years after the demise of apartheid.

KP makes too much of his not being selected at a young age. In the different sport of football , I recall one of Italy’s national strikers in the early 70s (I forget the name) was brought up in the UK and rejected by Swansea Town or Cardiff City before trying his luck in Italy. You can’t always predict an aspiring sportsman’s future, especially in this case where KP was competing as an off-spinner, not the explosive batsman he now is.

This time with closed tags …

A couple of points:

1. The person who took Pietersen’s place in the KZN team — Gulam Bodi — was very highly rated as a prospective SA player; hardly a token. Pietersen at that time had not matured into the batsman he has now become, nor was his international-level promise unambiguous. (There are lots of big hitters amongst SA teens, but the ability to whack a few sixes does not a test batsman make; cf. Afridi, Shahid) In short, preferring Bodi over Pietersen ten years ago was not a crazy decision on its merits, even if, with the benefit of hindsight, Pietersen is now obviously a superior cricketer. Other players have been far more harshly affected by the influence of quotas, notably Jacques Rudolph’s deselection from the test team in favour of Justin Ontong a while back. Pietersen just thought (probably correctly) that he could do better in England than in SA. Suggesting he was the one picking up the tab for years of racial injustice is a bit convenient. It’s this quickness to blame quotas as a justification to leave his country that Pietersen is typically criticised for, and not for the very suggestion that a white cricketer might have a valid grievance against the quota system.

2. Comparing Pietersen with Prince is not particularly helpful, since Prince was not selected above Pietersen. Nor would he have been if Pietersen had begun to play for SA in the way that he has played for England. Nevertheless, Prince is a fine player who averages over 45. He has only batted once against Zimbabwe (139*), and seven times against Bangladesh (2, 0, 10, 38, 2, 59*, 162*, averaging 54.6). The other 68 innings have seen good batting against England, Pakistan, India, and the Windies. So his average is hardly unusually inflated by batting against the minnows. Pietersen might be ranked 4 on the ICC list, but I can’t say I am particularly unhappy SA have been left to sort through the scraps with Smith, Amla, Kallis, De Villiers, Duminy, Prince, and whoever takes McKenzie’s place. There’s no doubt which dressing room is a better place to be.

Surely Pietersen actually did the right thing as far as benefitting black SA cricketers is concerned? Not only did he not try to overturn the quota system which had denied him a place in the national XI, but he left the country, thus presumably creating a vacancy in whatever second-grade XI he would otherwise have played in, which could be filled by another black player. The more white SA cricketers follow Pietersen in emigrating, the better the job prospects for black SA cricketers.

Paul Jewell described himself as a socialist and has a pet tortoise called Trotsky.

As a South African, and follower of cricket, I would say that KP’s leaving South Africa has benefited himself, and both SA and UK cricket.

SA is doing fairly well – despite the ‘quotas’; which are officially no longer in place (but listen for the screams if we ever field a team with less than 3 previously disadvantaged players). It has been a finely judged path over the past 14 years – and there is a long way to go still.
The investment in cricket facilities & education inpreviously advantaged areas, clubs and schools is still vastly greater. I believe that until this is reasonably balanced the not-officially-imposed ‘quota’ system will (and probably should) remain.

What leaves a bitter taste in the mouth regarding KP is his vitriolic comments about the system in which he was raised – where he was enormously advantaged. SA Cricket would not have tolerated the ego of a KP, even if he had been good enough at the time to overcome the racial hurdle.