Time hasn't proved a healer in the broken relationship between Graeme Swann and Kevin Pietersen after the former England spinner labelled his ex-teammate a 'd***head'.
The pair were both integral to a golden era for English Test cricket under Andy Flower, playing in three Ashes wins and helping elevate their side to No 1 in the world. But by the time 'KP' was controversially sacked by his country in 2013, he was already at loggerheads with fellow players over the 'text gate' scandal of the previous year.
Pietersen was accused of sending messages to South African opponents during a series, describing then captain Andrew Strauss as a 'doos', Afrikaans slang for a derogatory term. And speaking on the Rig Biz podcast, Swann recalled the explosive saga, and claimed Pietersen was responsible for his own downfall.
“It was the most bizarre (saga) you know, you’re living in a bit of a soap opera,” Swann said. "Kev’s different to everyone else I’ve ever met in my life and he said ‘it’s hard to be me, in the change room’. Yeah Kev, because you f***ed it all up!
“So yeah, he sent texts, then he had Piers Morgan do a YouTube video saying ‘I didn’t do this’, but now he says he did do it, but he was just texting his friends.”
Pietersen's England teammates were duly called into meetings with management to give their views on what transpired, with Swann proceeding to lay into Pietersen's character. Then one day captain Alastair Cook later rang the off spinner to discuss how blunt he'd been over the star batsman.
“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," added Swann. In early 2014, both players were out of the international picture, with Swann retiring midway through a 5-0 Ashes defeat down under before Pietersen was duly sacked afterwards, after being cited as a disruptive influence.
And Swann, who described Pietersen's claims that he was unfairly targeted by teammates as "b*****s", also took aim at the batsman's behaviour on the trip later dubbed 'the tour from hell' by pundits. By that point, the man who finished with over 8,100 Test runs to his name was publicly at odds with Cook, by then installed as Test captain, and coach Flower.
“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 k**b, bit of a d***head, but we didn’t all know," he added. “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.”
