Boom! Biff! Thwack!
ter being dismissed. This is the politics of the schoolyard, the ya-boo back-covering blame game of the kindergarten.
This is Pietersen’s book, so his side of the tale is the one pursued. And he is a man who has never been particularly interested in what anyone else has to say. At times, he makes his case with an aggression that is breath-taking. His dismissal of Andy Flower, the former coach, for instance, is presented in a brutal little couplet. “Andy Flower. Contagiously sour. Infectiously dour.”
But that is as nothing compared to his take-down of wicket keeper Matt Prior, who he witheringly describes as “Le Grand Fromage” of the England dressing room, a man he accuses of presiding over an institutionalised culture of bullying. If his claims are remotely close to accurate, then the fact it was him and not Prior dismissed for being the principal cause of ill-will in the England camp constitutes the biggest miscarriage of justice since Andy Dufresne was locked up in Shawshank.
The sadness of this book is that there is little in it that thrills. Winning over 100 caps, Pietersen played a prominent part in three grand Ashes successes. Reminiscence of these is but a fleeting moment, a pause in the roll call of revenge that drives him through the book. Mind, it makes the prose crackle with intent. Brilliantly corralled by his ghost writer David Walsh, this is a book that grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go, a whirlwind of aggression and jaw-dropping indiscretion, largely conducted in the language of the barrack room. And while it might sadden the England supporter to see the mystique around their team so comprehensively unpicked, you can only admire Pietersen’s shameless audacity.
If only the English game had been big enough to accommodate such an attitude, this book need never have been written. —© The Daily Telegraph