Goodbye KP – As you Bow out, some will never miss your prowess or arrogance

Kevin Pietersen has bowed out of international cricket (again) following the aftermath of a disastrous tour to Australia in which England handed back the Ashes in a whitewash series loss.

By Michael Marnewick

Despite carry the English hopes almost single-handedly, the ECB felt it was time to move on and a new broom is sweeping clean. England were smashed 5-0 in the Ashes, defeated 4-1 in the one-dayers and lost all three T20s. The purge didn't take long at all.

Gone is coach Andy Flower and gone is Pietersen in a purge of Southern African talent. Not that there is anything xenophobic to read into that, but clearly England's lacklustre performance (to put it nicely) was reflective of the inability of Flower to coach them to better results.

Similarly, Pietersen's axing – or retirement, whichever sales pitch you chose to go with – was not about poor performance, he was the highest-scoring batsman in the England side. He scored a total of 294 runs in the Tests at an average of just under 30.

Despite scoring over 8000 Test runs for England in 104 matches over a nine year international career, his time is clearly up as the ECB look to re-invent England sans KP.

Sadly, it's not so much his ability but rather the controversy that has been at the forefront of his career and he has had numerous run-ins with fellow players, coaches and the administrators. He tweets, he SMSs and he talks openly, and that has got him in hot water on numerous occasions, not least of all when he was dropped in 2012 having sent text messages to South African players that were critical of captain Andrew Strauss.

The product of Maritzburg College in KZN cited quotas at provincial level for leaving South Africa when he couldn't make the Dolphins side. Clearly, with 13797 international runs to his name, someone at KZN cricket failed to notice his quite extraordinary talent.

Or, like the ECB, felt he was too much of a trouble-maker to invest in.

He will now play in the IPL and earn many more millions, having achieved a century of Test matches and having little more to prove.