Cook torpedoed Pietersen’s recall

The England and Wales Cricket Board’s reasons for barring Kevin Pietersen’s return to the national team were undermined yesterday (NZ time) when Ian Bell said he had not witnessed any breakdown in trust between the exiled batsman and his England teammates.

It also became clear that captain Alastair Cook was the major obstacle to Pietersen’s return.

Bell, the first England player to comment on director of cricket Andrew Strauss’s decision to blackball Pietersen on the grounds that the ECB did not trust him, said Pietersen was the best batsman he had played with, and was right to feel ‘‘aggrieved’’. Bell said there were no problems between Pietersen and other England players, and that he ‘‘did not know’’ whether there had been disputes ‘‘behind closed doors’’.

What has been going on behind closed doors is that it was Cook who barred Pietersen’s return by threatening to resign as captain.

Cook is understood to have told the ECB of his position during the recent tour to the West Indies, at which point the board’s stance on Pietersen shifted.

It then began speaking to candidates for the director of cricket job who were told, if not in direct language, that they would have to manage the Pietersen issue because Cook would not have him in the team. Cook cannot forgive him for the criticisms in his book and the personal attacks he received on Twitter from Pietersen’s supporters last summer, which reduced his wife Alice to tears.

When presented with a choice between Cook and Pietersen, the board chose what it felt would be the lesser of two public relations disasters. Opting for Pietersen over Cook would have toppled a captain, and many at the ECB believe it would be unfair to throw Joe Root into an Ashes summer as England captain under such circumstances.

Cook held all the power in this issue even if his own captaincy will not last long if results are poor against New Zealand and Australia take an early stranglehold of the Ashes series. Strauss said Cook had not been consulted on the Pietersen decision.

Cook will speak on Thursday, the day before the first test, when he is likely to deny any suggestion that he offered to resign but it is now clear he and Pietersen can never share a dressing room as captain and player. That would change if Cook stood down as captain and concentrated on playing because he would no longer have the power to veto a return for Pietersen.

Knowing that Cook may not be the England captain beyond the summer is why this week the ECB did not rule out a return for Pietersen at some point.