Former Test spinner Graeme Swann has unleashed an explosive tirade towards his controversial former teammate, Kevin Pietersen.
Swann described Pietersen, who was identified for his often-frosty relationships with teammates and directors alike, as “different” and saying that the pair “never liked each other”.
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While Pietersen was at all times outspoken, the peak of turbulence within the England arrange got here in 2012, with the star batter caught sending derogatory texts about teammates Andrew Strauss and coach Andy Flower to opposition gamers throughout a Test match.
The texts reportedly referred to Strauss as a “doos” – an Afrikaans slang time period broadly translating to an fool.
Swann described your complete affair as a “soap opera”.
“It was the most bizarre (situation) you know, you’re living in a bit of a soap opera,” Swann stated.
“Kev’s different to everyone else I’ve ever met in my life and he said ‘it’s hard to be me, in (the England) change room’. Yeah Kev, because you f**ked it all up!
“So yeah, he sent texts, then he had (TV personality) Piers Morgan do a YouTube video saying ‘I didn’t do this’, but now he says he did do it, but (that) he was just texting his friends.”
Asked whether or not there have been confrontations between Pietersen and the opposite gamers over the texts, Swann stated interactions between Pietersen and the opposite gamers needed to be mediated, as there remained no images of the messages in query owing to camera-phone expertise then being in its relative infancy on the time.
“It was the early days of the (Sony) Ericsson 350 flip, so no one knew you could take photos and stuff like that.
“So legally, England didn’t have any grounds for sacking him, so he was reintegrated.
“We had to have meetings in a golf course in Oxford … we were all called there, one by one, there was a conflict resolution expert there from the business world … we all had to go in one at a time and say if we had any beef with Kevin.
“(Kevin) was there, (ODI captain) Alastair Cook was there and (coach) Andy Flower, so I went both barrels, because I thought ‘I can’t believe I’ve got to do this on my day off, and Kev was very defensive and said ‘I had to fly back from South Africa for this.’
“Well, it is your f***king fault, Kevin!
“I’m not sure how everyone else went, after the meeting Alastair Cook rang me up and said ‘Jesus Christ, you did go both barrels!’
“I felt I could because me and Kev never liked each other anyway, a lot of other people either like him a bit or got on with him but me and Kev always hated each other.”
Swann would then go on to garbage Pietersen’s claims on the time that he was the sufferer of bullying within the England arrange.
A parody Twitter account known as “KPgenius” was distinguished on the time for mocking Pietersen, and Swann stated “to this day, he thinks it was me”.
“I said ‘Kevin, I don’t like you and you don’t like me, I spend as little time as possible thinking about you as you do with me, why would I do this?’
“Kev absolutely loved that account, he was reading it out laughing and going ‘look at this, this is great’, happily going along with it until he f**ked up with those text messages, knowing that two of the s****est newspapers in the world would always back him up – I’m not mentioning newspapers, but the Daily Mail.”
Swann stated Pietersen used comparatively regular on-field teammate behaviour as the premise for his bullying claims.
“Batsmen are all pussies, and they can’t ever accept their own failures and hold their hand up when they f**k up in the field and say sorry.
“The batsmen called a meeting and said the bowlers were being mean to us and shouting at us when we misfielded – Kev then used that to say he was being bullied.
“I mean Kev is 6’4, South African, could’ve easily got in the Springbok team and he said he got bullied.
“I mean it’s absolute bollocks and everyone knew it was bollocks, but people will believe someone if they have a sob story.”
Swann would proceed to criticise Pietersen’s behaviour on the doomed 2013-14 Ashes tour to Australia, which noticed Mitchell Johnson terrorise the English and lead Australia to a 5-0 victory that noticed Jonathan Trott and Swann retire mid-series.
“There was a general undermining of the captain and trying to get the captain sacked and the coach sacked and generally being a bit of a knob, bit of a d***head, but we didn’t all know (about the extent of his behaviour).
“We just thought Kev’s Kev but he was being quite nasty behind the scenes and using his friends in the press, it was messy.”
Originally printed as Graeme Swann unloads on former teammate Kevin Pietersen
Source: www.dailytelegraph.com.au
