Peacock Man to the Top

Though the colors in his nest have faded, I doubt that he can ever get rid of them. Or, put simply, I don't think Kevin Pietersen can do the job for England. Not the captaining one, anyway. As batsman, he has been excellent. But he is definitely not captain material. I'd be very surprised if he were. Captaincy is more about man management skills rather actual playing skill. KP has been seen more as his own man. What one requires is a People's person. KP is not one of them. Andrew Strauss, I think, would have been a good bet. England erred before in handing Flintoff the captaincy as against Strauss in the last Ashes. Everyone knows what happened then and after. Only when Vaughan returned did the semblence of normalcy returned to the English camp. KP is more in the mould of Flintoff rather than Vaughan or even Nasser Hussain. He can be one of the blokes but not lead them. Even handing capataincy to Alistair Cook would have been a good move keeping an eye on the future. The best example of this has been Graeme Smith for South Africa. Even, Dhoni for us has proved to have been a good bet as against Yuvraj. But KP commands more respect, or more aptly, can be expected to have more acumen than Yuvraj or Flintoff. So, England can expect to have at best an interim captain in KP rather than a long lasting one. One must not forget that he is not English. And the attitude that he has supposedly shown till now has been of a man playing for himself or at best his mates, rather than his country. So, it is very optimistic to assume that he can be a good future leader. At any rate, I wouldn't like to see an another attacking batsman curb himself to normal levels just because he leads ten guys to the field. No KP, this cpataincy thing, this ain't for you!!

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