It’s not jealousy Mr Pietersen, it’s pure and simple indifference

By David Green

"Engage brain before mouth" is a simple idiom, but one that time and time again Kevin Pietersen absolutely fails to comprehend, which in combination with his breathtaking and unorthodox strokeplay makes him compulsory viewing both on and off the field of play.

Not for the first time, England cricketer Kevin Pietersen has got it completely and utterly wrong © AFP

By David Green

“Engage brain before mouth” is a simple idiom, but one that time and time again Kevin Pietersen absolutely fails to comprehend, which in combination with his breathtaking and unorthodox strokeplay makes him compulsory viewing both on and off the field of play.

Pietersen’s latest foot-in-mouth moment came when he suggested that negative attitudes in England towards the Indian Premier League (IPL) can in the main be put down to “jealousy”.

Not for the first time, we believe that Pietersen has got it completely and utterly wrong. We can only speak as one English cricket following enclave, but our feelings towards the IPL border on indifference rather than envy or anything more sinister, and we believe that the same is true for most.

First and foremost for all the glitz, glamour and money that are part and parcel of the IPL, it is after all to everyone bar one billion Indians – a not insignificant number, we grant – a foreign domestic league. As such, we care as little for the IPL as we do the Sheffield Shield or indeed Zimbabwe’s domestic competitions.

Secondly, its Twenty 20 cricket, a form of the game that leaves us cold. It has a place to widen the appeal of cricket beyond its traditional geographic, social and demographic groups and it undeniably has helped bolster the coffers of clubs and cricket boards everywhere, but to our tastes at least it is little more than two pumps and a squirt compared to the delights of four or five-day cricket.

Finally, and perhaps most relevantly, for the last two years, the IPL has started in exactly the same week as the first round of the County Championship – a competition dripping in tradition and history and which still holds a special place for the majority of English cricket followers. For most, a choice between the hit–and-giggle of a foreign Twenty 20 cricket league and the unique institution that is the domestic County Championship is a straightforward one.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the money on offer to players for participating in the IPL was enticing the likes of Owais Shah, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Luke Wright and England players such as Pietersen himself away from County cricket, the IPL would be a complete irrelevance for most English cricket fans.

We did try the IPL once in 2010, but crucially in that year it started one month before the County season and immediately preceded the World T20 in the Caribbean. This meant that seeing how the likes of Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Ravi Bopara got on with their respective IPL sides was of a modicum of interest. As soon as the County season started, our interest waned.

Pietersen seems to love attention, celebrity and glamour, so is likely to be drawn to the sometimes crass and over-the-top spectacle of the IPL. Perhaps he has forgotten that it was County cricket that first gave him the platform to exhibit the innate and untamed talent that ultimately led to an international career with England where he has delighted and astounded in equal degree.

He has worked tremendously hard to achieve all he has, but without the opportunity afforded him by Nottinghamshire, would he still be a spinner who bats a bit struggling for a game in South African domestic cricket? Only the Gods of cricket know the answer to that.

From what we’ve read, heard or seen, there isn’t much jealously out there towards the IPL. A touch of anger maybe for the loss of an important player to one’s county (or country, in the case of the West Indies), even some good old fashioned English snobbery towards the nouveau riche, but for the most part it is pure indifference. It’s just another cricket competition being played in the world at the same time as the revered County Championship, nothing more, nothing less.

(David Green is the brain behind the irreverent The Reverse Sweep blog and also writes for a number of cricket publications and sites such as World Cricket Watch. You can follow him on Twitter also@TheReverseSweep. David was a decent schoolboy and club cricketer (and scored his maiden 100 the same week that Sachin Tendulkar scored his first Test ton) but not good enough to fulfil his childhood dream of emulating Douglas Jardine by winning the Ashes in Australia and annoying the locals into the bargain. He now lives with his wife and two young children in the South of France and will one day write the definitive biography of Hedley Verity)