Former England spinner Graeme Swann has made a scathing attack on his former captain Kevin Pietersen said, “they never liked each other.”
In 2012, Kevin Pietersen was caught sending derogatory texts about captain Andrew Strauss and coach Andy Flower to opposition players during a Test match against South Africa.
Swann described the saga as a ‘soap opera’.
“We found out two or three days before because we’d all seen the texts,” Swann said on The Rig Biz Podcast.
“The most bizarre (sequence of events), you know you’re living in a bit of a soap opera. I mean Kev’s different, let’s face it, I have no hard feelings … but Kev’s different to everyone else I’ve ever met in my life and he knows he’s different and he says he’s different.”
Swann said no one took photos of the messages, and thus England’s cricket board couldn’t sack him.
“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 a meeting in a golf course in Oxford … we were all called there one by one, there was conflict resolution expert there from the business world … we all had to go one at a time and say if we had any beef with Kevin,” he said.
“He (Kevin) was there, Alistair Cook was there and Andy Flower, I went both barrels because I thought I f–king can’t believe I’ve got to 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 Alistair 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 denied Pietersen’s claim that there was a bully culture inside the England dressing room.
There’s a batsman and bowler thing in cricket, and batsman 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,” he said.
“The batsman called a meeting and said the bowlers are being mean to us and shouting at us when we misfield … 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.”
A parody Twitter account called “KPgenius” was prominent at the time for mocking Pietersen, and Swann said “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 thinking about you as possible as you do with me, why would I do this?
“I once put a tweet to Piers Morgan …. only one in four of them are funny so it’s definitely not me, thinking that’d put it to bed.
“Kevin said to me at this meeting you said one in four is funny, and I know four people are doing this account so that means you are one of them.
“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.
“Adolf Hitler had a point, the bigger the lie more people will believe it.”
Swann also blamed Pietersen for playing politics in the dressing room during the 2013-14 Ashes series when Australia won 5-0, with the off-spinner retiring with immediate affect after the third test.
“I went into that series not knowing where the ball was going to land, I played the first test, I thought I’ve got to get out of here, Mitchell Johnson blew us away,” he said.
“I played the second test and I was screwed and I said to Cookie afterwards I’m f–ked now, I can’t carry on.
“I feel for Cookie, he said to me at the time ‘I really need you, I need senior players in the room, I need friends in the room because something’s going on’.
“We didn’t know what was going on because Andy Flower and Alistair Cook hid everything from the team of what Kev was up to and the sort of things he was up to.
“(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 dickhead but we didn’t know all this. 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.”
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