Keane and Pietersen
Mae West famously said “Keep a diary and then a diary will keep you.” The sporting week has been dominated by the books of Roy Keane and Kevin Pietersen. One can imagine the publisher/literary agent saying we want something juicy for the serialisation and no one is interested in the euro qualifiers so that’s a good week to publish. So the airwaves and print are full to bursting with the outpourings of these self-possessed men.
Yes, there is probably bullying in the dressing room, yes the ECB do not know how to play the media war and yes Kevin Pietersen left South Africa, Nottinghamshire and now England in a hissy fit. To me this illustrates the dangers of the flag of inconvenience. I may sound like a UKIP candidate but it’s not a coincidence that the the accuser and accused (Prior and Flower) are from Southern Africa. Could you imagine Colin Cowdrey behaving like this? As for Roy Keane – the man who sold Jordan Rhodes to Huddersfield for a pittance – he strikes an odd figure in his luxuriant grey beard, not unlike W.G. Grace but are we really interested in what he thinks of Fergie? The other day it was manna from heaven to read a beautifully crafted piece by Henry Wiinter on Jimmy Greaves.
According to Sky, football did not exist before the Premier league but Jimmy Greaves would have score in any era. He simply had the knack of goal scoring. I happened to catch a radio progamme on the 1964 General Election. The Tory Premier, the Etonian 14th Earl of Home, was derided by grammar school boy Harold Wilson but after he left politics he never wrote a bad word of his colleagues and Richard Ingrams said however much they taunted him he would never react. Sometimes the old values are the best.
