WHAT a ridiculous furore over Kevin Pietersen. For the love of cricket, may he ride off into a glorious IPL sunset and allow us to return to some semblance of sanity.

That's a big ask, however, when every shake-up at the ECB results in some newly-appointed grandee sticking his foot in it.

Colin Graves hadn't even taken up his role as chairman before he uttered the words which resulted in the latest shindig. He probably meant it as a throwaway line when he said Pietersen needed to score some runs in county cricket if he was to be considered by England. But with a little forethought he might have sensed it wouldn't sound that way to KP.

Then we have Andrew Strauss taking on a role in which his responsibilities are fairly vague but surely don't include selection. He didn't need to muddy the waters by talking about issues of trust – he could simply have said it would be down to the selectors to pick the best squad, then it would be up to the coach and especially the captain to pick the final XI.

When going into a five-day Test match any captain should have the right to take the field with the ten other players he wants. There can be no room for a disruptive influence, no matter how talented he is.

Pietersen may have fitted in well with the Surrey showboats, but he has fallen out with members of every other English team he has played for. It started at Nottinghamshire, whose captain at the time, Jason Gallian, once threw his kit out of the window.

It is laughable that people like Piers Morgan, who doesn't know one end of a cricket bat from the other, jump on the KP bandwagon, thereby fuelling the media circus. And, sadly, this whole business is media-driven, creating news where it shouldn't exist.

Pietersen's record in his last couple of years as an England player would certainly not warrant him getting back in the team at the expense of Joe Root, Gary Ballance or Ian Bell. And scoring big runs against Oxford University and lamentable Leicestershire is irrelevant, just as it was when Graeme Hick used to bully county attacks.

He was another hugely talented batsman from southern Africa who never quite fitted into the England team. Ballance, who also hails from that neck of the woods, doesn't have the same talent. But he certainly makes the most of what he's got, which is the essence of a good team man.