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Lords, London – In what is already being described as a groundbreaking compromise, the ECB and Kevin Pietersen have resolved their remaining issues by agreeing to retire Andy Flower as coach of the England ODI side.
Pietersen and Flower have at times had a difficult working relationship, starting in 2009 with Pietersen’s attempts as captain to have Flower sacked from his then role as England batting coach and coming to a head earlier this year with Pietersen’s on-off retirement from international one-day cricket.
“The main problem is that KP is a regular in all formats of the game,” explained a source within the ECB, “It’s easy to concentrate on the glamour and prestige of that job but to forget that for Kevin the reality is having to spend up to eleven months of the year worrying that your coach will try to get his own back by making you field at short leg to Stuart Broad or providing you with net bowlers who are all slow left armers. That just wears you down in the end; it’s just exhausting. So it was finally agreed that Andy should step-down from running the ODI side in order to give Kevin a much needed rest from worrying that he’ll be given the dressing room spot nearest the toilet, which, as you can imagine, is an incredibly stressful thought when you’re on tour in India.”
However, when asked if Flower would be allowed to use his time away from the England set-up to coach in the IPL or BigBash, our source remained noncommittal.
“It depends if the ECB want one last chance to piss off KP.”