How Pietersen Seized the Media Initiative Ahead of the Ecb

For most of this morning, players, supporters and officials alike were reduced to sitting in front of Sky Sports News to try to make sense of the swirl of confusion surrounding the future of English cricket. It was the sort of flurry that has become a feature of the 24-hour digital news age.

As the mobile phones of ECB executives went unanswered, it initially seemed that Kevin Pietersen was controlling the news agenda from a safari park in South Africa. Even when they were tracked down, it seemed that the rolling news channel knew more than they did.

Sometimes unfairly, rolling news channels are usually seen as reflecting, rather than shaping, events – hence the caricature of a reporter standing outside Scotland Yard or No10 repeating the words being read into their ear piece from the news wires. So when, from 9am today, Sky Sports News started breaking a series of stories about the shock resignation of Pietersen and the simultaneous departure of his nemesis, the England coach, Peter Moores, after a week of mounting tension, it was a major coup.

Not only were they definitively reporting the departure of both, they had half a dozen contenders lined up for each job and had rounded up a parade of legendary players to comment. And, of course, viewers were invited to start reacting immediately to the news via email and text message. Caught cold, other media outlets scrambled to catch up, with most hedging their stories with the word "reportedly". But by 11am, the BBC was also reporting the departure of both Moores and Pietersen as definitive. On the radio, the sports editor, Mihir Bose, and cricket correspondent, Jonathan Agnew, appeared to contradict one another. Bose said his sources had confirmed the departures, Agnew that he had been told neither had tendered their resignations. Meanwhile, there was still radio silence from all the major players in the drama.

The febrile swirl of rumour and counter-rumour comes after a week of rival briefings from within a divided England camp. Andrew Flintoff is said to admire Pietersen as a player but to have little in common with him personally. And others backed Moores over Pietersen. With players and staff all telling their own stories to their chosen contacts, and Pietersen making an explosive intervention with a News of the World interview from South Africa, the lack of any concrete information about the future of both men provided a vacuum for speculation. And there are few sports with such well-developed rumour mills as cricket. Indeed, one of the major complaints against Pietersen seems to be that he came out and aired his views openly rather than, presumably, leaking them out more subtly.

The initial suspicion was that Pietersen had sensed which way the wind was blowing following a late-night meeting of the ECB that appeared to swing behind Moores, and wanted to get his side of the story out first. Some conspiracy theorists wondered whether the close links between the ECB and Sky, which recently renewed its £300m TV contract, had allowed it to get ahead of the competition. But it is understood that it was a player who is a friend of Pietersen, although not a key member of the England team, who was dripping the news into the ear of a Sky News reporter. What is not clear is whether Pietersen had sanctioned his intervention.

And by midday, the situation was even less clear. With the ECB promising a statement by this afternoon, the situation was beginning to resemble the days of crisis that have sporadically overtaken other sporting governing bodies from the FA to the RFU down the years. It now potentially faces not only the sizable task of appointing a new coach and captain to restore the harmony of a team due to leave for the West Indies in a fortnight ahead of a packed and crucial Ashes year, but in countering the perception that it helped cause the crisis by dithering and failing to seize control of the agenda.

In the wake of the public relations triumph of the team's return to India in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the events of the past week – on the back of a lesser but similar swirl of recent speculation around its future relationship with Allen Stanford – could prove very damaging for the ECB. But, depending on the outcome, it will also go down as one of the very best – or the very worst – days in the history of Sky Sports News too.