In our experience, the employees most likely to be considered ‘team players’ are the obedient, unquestioning ones. Management may make great show of inviting feedback – and they may honestly believe that they’re open to it – but the truth is that no-one makes a decision thinking it is the wrong one.

Most of us, when our thinking is questioned, are liable to grow defensive. We’re also likely to somewhat take against the person who is challenging us. A manager might think: “Why are you trying to undermine me? Why can’t you be more of a team player, like Alan or Deano?”

This sort of situation is compounded when the questioner reads social situations badly and when the person being criticised is feeling vulnerable anyway. We wonder to what extent this might be what happened with Kevin Pietersen, Alastair Cook and Andy Flower in Australia.

Motives and execution

The Telegraph is reporting a Pietersen ‘rant’ about Andy Flower during a players’ meeting. You can easily imagine that he might have gone about things the wrong way, but was what he was saying really so radically different to what the rest of the players were feeling?

Cook and Prior called the meeting because they felt they were relying too heavily on Flower. It seems Pietersen was of a similar mind, but felt that this was Flower’s fault. This is a distinction, but his motives for speaking up were the same: the team weren’t playing well and he had identified a lack of self-reliance among the players.

At heart, he still wanted the team to improve, but expressed himself badly with the effect perhaps magnified by his frustration at being marginalised.

Threat to sense of self

Andy Flower is a strong man. Few would question that. Could a man who took a stand against Robert Mugabe ever feel threatened by someone like Kevin Pietersen?

Well, perhaps. Taking a stand against a dictator takes courage, but if anything it is an act which adds to your sense of self. You can take pride in what you’ve done. It is not easier to do than accepting you were wrong about something – but it is a different thing. Accepting you were wrong means acknowledging your own fallibility and who can readily take pride in that? Flower might well not be that kind of person.

It’s the flipside of having conviction. When things are going badly, conviction might manifest itself as greater certainty that you are right and a belief that what is going wrong is that people aren’t doing exactly what you want them to do. All your repressed insecurities and self-doubt might therefore become focused on those who question you the most (and in the clumsiest manner).

A strong, confident, self-assured leader of men

Alastair Cook was perhaps in a similar position. He will certainly have been having doubts about his ability to lead the team – he’s said as much himself. That’s not a strong base from which to withstand questions about the way you’re going about things. It’s easy to say that valid points should be taken on board by those in authority, but insecurity can affect us all – particularly when the defeats are piling up.

Further reading

We’ve done another Pietersen piece for Cricinfo. You’re probably a bit weary of it all by now, but if you’re not, it’s about the ECB information vacuum and the concept of ‘rebuilding’.

‘He goes or I go’ – this is supposedly the stance being taken by Andy Flower, according to Mike Selvey in the Guardian. We almost wish there were a sixth Test so that we could continue talking about cricket – but of course that would merely postpone this sort of stuff. It wouldn’t prevent it.

Let’s naively take the story at face value, ignoring the mechanisms and motives of the press. We’re doing this for no reason other than it gives us an excuse to write about our bathroom.

Kevin Pietersen may well be a pain in the arse; he may well disrupt the rest of the squad to some extent; but if a ‘him or me’ ultimatum is the best method you can come up with for resolving such things, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of your strategising.

In our house, the bathroom is downstairs, next to the kitchen. It’s a stupid layout, we don’t want it there and there have been many suggestions as to how to move it upstairs. No plan is perfect, but we’ll eventually go with the one that is most satisfactory. What we won’t do is dynamite the existing bathroom and just leave it at that.

You need a bathroom. If you’re in charge, your job is to find a way of having one in the house.