London, Aug 19 : An active blogger and former England captain Mike Brearley, who once traveled with cricketer Kevin Pietersen on a flight, believes that the impasse between him and hisEngland team is not just confined to the recent controversy over sending text messages to South African cricketers, but an accumulation of a number of factors and situations over a period of time.
Brearley, who had a long conversation with Pietersen in 2008 on a plane journey between Chennai and Mohali, when he was captaining England, believes that Pietersen felt insecure and divided as a person, and needed 'more reassurance about his value and his standing' in English cricket.
"My impression is that he is an insecure and divided person. I remember being surprised (though I shouldn't have been) at how much praise some fine players needed, how much they benefited from being told (truthfully) how good they were," The Guardian quoted Brearley, as writing on a blog.
"I imagine that his mood switches from high to low, so that he is liable either to be over the top, regarding himself as above reproach, able to get away with anything, or else to be low, from which position he feels the need to build himself up, to excite himself by provoking responses, even negative ones," he added.
Brearley claimed that while Pietersen's replacement, Jonny Bairstow's success "has made England miss Pietersen less", its upto the South-African-born cricketer to fix and mend his relations with England, if he wants to continue his career there.
"I suspect there is no stomach for easy rapprochement in the England set-up, and it will be up to Pietersen to show some contrition and be willing to look at his own contribution to the difficulties before he is tolerated in the team, let alone welcomed back with open arms," he concluded.
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