10 Dressing room secrets in cricket history

4. A bullying culture and cliques inside England’s dressing room (2010-12)

Kevin Pietersen, who perhaps had endured an atrocious time against his former players and from the ECB especially at the fag end of his career, had interestingly made some shocking revelations through his new book back in 2014. The cricketer had largely alleged that there was a culture of “bullying” within the England team and that a clique made up of Graeme Swann, Stuart Broad and Matt Prior had ruled the roost.

What Pietersen had significantly highlighted was that these bunch of above-mentioned cricketers used to mock, ridicule, and bully their own fielders and teammates especially when they made a mistake while playing. In fact, in one of the Test matches, someone like Jonathan Trott had cracked because of these lousy events. Further, Pietersen had also criticized the former wicket-keeper batsman Matt Prior as the leader of the clique eventually calling him a massive negative influence inside England’s dressing room.

Now especially the development of various cliques in the England dressing room was also largely highlighted when the former England wicket-keeper batsman Craig Kieswetter had opened up about a divide in the team during his statements back in 2015.

The statement made by the former Somerset wicket-keeper batsman said that “Although he entered a united dressing room in early 2010, winning the World T20 and then the Ashes in Australia “changed people”.

“It wasn’t just us competing against the opposition,”. “There was a sense that some of us were competing against one another. By the time we were No1 in the world, it was a very different dressing room. Success changed people. Cliques developed. There were jokes made in the dressing room if you had a South African background. When we warmed up in training, we were split into sides: South Africans v English.

“It created an unnecessary divide. A sense of them and us. It grew worse. The Test players were together so much that, when the limited-overs players turned up, it felt like you were on the outside. The Test guys hung out with each other; the limited-overs guys hung out. The spirit I experienced in those first few weeks was never there again.”