“We openly disliked each other”: Greame Swann brazenly reveals his dislike for Kevin Pietersen when duo played for England

Greame Swann brazenly reveals his dislike for Kevin Pietersen while the latter got involved in a series of controversies as England player.

While former England star batter Kevin Pietersen undoubtedly had a stellar career as an England cricketer, it was also one marred by way too many controversies.

It all started with his rather short captaincy stint, which led to his sacking as well as that of then coach Peter Moores. Things never went back into a state of normalcy, as his feud with fellow English teammates came to light one after the other.

While some were allegedly jealous of his rise as an IPL player, the others had issues with him leaking private information about Andrew Strauss with South African players, which eventually led to cancellation of his contract with ECB as well for a brief period.

Pietersen also let the world know about the alleged formation of a clique within the dressing room, which led to him subtly threatening the ECB with his Test retirement.

Ultimately, after many such aforementioned events, his glorious Cricketing career came to end following the 2013/14 Ashes series, which England lost 0-5.

Really enjoyed doing this with @felixwhite any one got a better post 1998 England cricket team? Tres, Cook, Vaughan, Root, Pietersen, Stewert, Flintoff, Swann, Gough, Harmison and Anderson… #tailendersoftheworlduniteandtakeover pic.twitter.com/cIwAeGfLCK

— Tommy Banks (@TommyBanks8) November 4, 2018

Greame Swann brazenly reveals his dislike for Kevin Pietersen

In an interaction with SkySports, former England spinner Greame Swann openly stated his dislike for Kevin Pietersen when the duo played together for England.

“We actually got on better professionally than most other people because we were honest with each other,” he told Sky Sports. “We openly disliked each other, but we wanted each other in the team. I wanted a Kevin Pietersen who was scoring runs because he was simply one of the best in the world.”

Reminiscing Pietersen’s leaked conversation with South African players regarding Andrew Strauss, Swann said, “There were times when there were exterior things like the texting with Andrew Strauss. “When you’re getting to the point that you’re having team meetings to discuss, ‘What are we going to do about these text messages that have been sent?’, and the player is saying, ‘I did not send these, it’s complete lies’, and then subsequently, you know he’s sent them and he’s saying ‘Well I did send them because they’re my mates’, that doesn’t help things.”

Pietersen had publicly apologised to his teammates, including Strauss, when he got his central contract revived by the EBC for a temporary phase of four months.

Swann, however, went on to state that both Pietersen and him were similar on many fronts, which helped them get along professionally, but denied the existence of certain cliques that Pietersen had always mentioned existed in the dressing room.

“There weren’t discernible cliques,” he said. “We’re a team who got to No.1 in the world, and within a team there are always going to be individuals… 99 per cent of that team were very much in it for the team as well. What we ended up having with Kevin was a situation where he’d been captain before, and he definitely didn’t like the establishment and rules, much like me. We were actually very similar in many ways, me and Kev,” Swann exclaimed.