Kevin Pietersen’s reintegration into the England side is not being helped by his attitude since he was sidelined by a knee injury.
Pietersen’s award of a central contract in January after his success in India suggested all was reconciled following the dressing-room rifts last summer which saw KP dropped for sending ‘provocative’ texts to the South Africans about England captain Andrew Strauss.
Taking a dip: Pietersen also posted a picture of himself swimming
But Pietersen is again antagonising the ECB with his seeming desire to be a man apart from the rest of the squad. He chose not to attend the England Player of the Year function at Lord’s on Monday despite being in London that day.
And it continues to frustrate the England management that KP is the one contracted player not to drive a Jaguar while on international duty, which is part of the sponsorship agreement. Pietersen first preferred a Range Rover Sport and now favours a Mercedes.
The attention-seeking with his tweets while a Test is going on without him — either swimming in Dubai or bronzed from the sun and stripped to his boxer shorts in his hotel room — don’t help the reintegration cause, either.
Michael Vaughan, whose varied business interests extend far beyond his Test Match Special and Channel 5 pundit duties, now has a stake in bespoke shirtmaker and tailors Barrington Ayre, who have Robbie Savage, Dan Walker and David Lloyd promoting their clothes. Bumble is due to wear blue or green suits during the Ashes depending on who has the ascendency. Meanwhile Andrew Strauss, who will join the Sky commentary team for the Ashes, was at Lord’s on Friday to learn the TV ropes. His partnerships on air with Sir Ian Botham will be interesting after Beefy famously referred to some of double Ashes winning leader Strauss’s captaincy coming from the ‘schoolboy manual’.Lord's had a crowd of around 27,000 for the first day of the Test, yet only 11 of the £20 ‘ultimate steak sarnies’ from Jamie Oliver’s event caterers were sold.
It was unkindly suggested that MCC’s incoming president Mike Gatting, who loves his grub, might have bought most of them.
Not popular: Only 11 of the Ultimate Steak Sarnies (Below) were sold on day one of the Test
Meanwhile, Gatting’s potential conflict of interests in being both MCC president and an ECB executive has been raised by Lord’s members. They were assured Gatting will leave the room when issues like Test match staging agreements are discussed.
Cricket could be the next battleground between BT Sport and Sky, with the former expected to bid for an ICC portfolio which includes the World Cup, Champions Trophy and World T20.Intriguingly, Sky Sports chief Barney Francis and his ITV counterpart Niall Sloane, who have just carved up international football rights in Europe between them, had a breakfast meeting outside Lord’s yesterday. The IPL, now on ITV4, is also on BT’s wish list. Hacked off in Hackney
Alisher Usmanov is now only one share away from taking his stake in Arsenal to 30 per cent — the level that would have meant a full takeover bid before Stan Kroenke bought his majority holding. However Usmanov, who is still denied a place on the Arsenal board, is expected to confirm his long-term ambition of buying the club when he reaches the landmark.
The damage done by concerts to sports pitches on Hackney Marshes — and the local council’s plans to repeat them — are proving a major embarrassment for Olympic legacy promises.
A BBC music festival during the 2012 Games disrupted grass-roots sport on the Marshes to the extent that 23 football pitches, three cricket pitches and all rugby facilities were out of commission for months. Two football surfaces remain unfit for use, although the council say that has nothing to do with the concerts being held there.
And the council, far from just restoring their sports grounds, are involved in a consultation process to decide whether to apply for concert use there for the next five years. The upset is such that the Football Foundation have withheld £1.25million in development grants for Hackney Marshes. An FA spokesman said: ‘Repeated disruption to the site will jeopardise the future of football in this area of London.’
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