Andrew Alderson: Kiss and tell book shows dark side of competition

Kevin Pietersen. Photo / Getty Images

If ever there was a neon-lit example of cricket implosion, the Kevin Pietersen autobiography debacle is, to use modern management parlance, best practice.

Seeing team-mates, who had previously combined to be the world's No 1 test side, unravel in such an unseemly manner leaves a blight on the sport. That dressing room sounded like Lord of the Flies with coathangers and towels.

The Pietersen revelations - released with rabid glee after a confidentiality agreement had expired - and the subsequent counter-leaking of an Ashes dossier on his misbehaviour have made England's finest cricketers look like narcissistic schoolboys with no way of controlling their destiny once resolute leader Andrew Strauss was gone and his insular successor Alastair Cook replaced him.

Then again, Pietersen accelerated Strauss' exit by initiating the text saga of 2012.

Pietersen, then a supposedly 32-year-old grown man, referenced Strauss by the South African slang 'doos' in text messages to opposition players from his country of birth. The term is apparently translated as 'box' but can have a more derogatory meaning.

That's why the whiff of hypocrisy pervades heavily at the thought of Pietersen's distress at his team-mates' scorn. His subsequent suggestion, that he didn't think he would make it on the podium of egocentric people in that team, is staggering if it's anywhere near true.

There will be no binary explanation to what has happened. The various protagonists appear to have pinged back and forth off each other like bumper boats on an effluent pond with no thought given to the consequence of the splashes. Pietersen appears to be marinating in self-pity.

The shame of it is that he is an exceptional analyst. A session watching him demonstrate batsmanship as a television pundit on a studio-built net was a highlight of the 2012 World T20. He was a savant.

Perhaps there's an element of this English team gene in most international sides - DNA strands of team culture combine into a double helix of ambition and cunning as players negotiate weeks and months together in close quarters. Machiavellian meets Darwinian, the 'end justifies the means' versus 'survival of the fittest'.

Then again, few workplaces don't operate under some cocktail of stress and ego. That's how the world turns. It's just that in cricket, with the focus now on the supposed utopia generated by the glitz and glamour of the Indian Premier League since 2008, it sparks the imagination and envy of the average fan.

The reality is the nature of cricket, with its victors and vanquished, means there's always a cycle of rise and fall.

Prior to the Ashes in England last year, Australia were in freefall before Mickey Arthur walked, West Indian and Pakistani problems between players and management are administrative stock balls, South Africa have operated under the shadow of a quota, India are under strain from an insipid 12 months and Sri Lanka are preparing to deal with the leadership vacuum when Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene exit all formats of the game.

That brings us to New Zealand. Few other teams are in a more united position four months from the start of the World Cup. Any rifts from 2012 and 2013 appear to be behind them.

If they can identify and capitalise on England-like social conflict within other teams, they might win a first World Cup.