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Bad Blood: When Taylor Swift and Kevin Pietersen clashed over cats

HUW TURBERVILL recalls the American star's visit to Lord's and her attempt to learn about KP's "chest match" troubles

Huw Turbervill | 15/08/2024 at 10:35

Taylor Swift is in town for a set (that's five, non-Hundred fans) of sell-out gigs at Wembley (the first is on Thursday). Tickets are costing about £250 a time (my wife and two daughters are going... I know, tell me about it).

We have been desperately looking for a cricket angle here at The Cricketer – other than the fact that her name sounds like she could be a West Indies quick.

Finally we did recall the excruciating time, 10 years ago, that she appeared with Kevin Pietersen and Somerset CCC fanatic John Cleese on the Graham Norton Show on BBC1 nearly a decade ago.

KP and Cleese (comedy messiah that he is) come across as a tad patronising to be fair, but Swift tries to be a good sport.

Norton quizzes the former England star about his book, KP: The Autobiography, which rakes the muck from the grisly Ashes tour of 2013/14 (a 5-0 defeat, a duffing up by Mitchell Johnson). "I think it's common in all walks of life for people to paper over the cracks when things are going well," says KP, "and when things start to go wrong people look for excuses, and people blame each other.

"One thing I am proud about is that Andy Flower (the coach on the tour) knows all the stuff in the book before I wrote it. When we were doing well, I was still complaining about the stuff that I knew wasn't right in the system."

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^{Kevin Pietersen celebrates his first Test century as Ashley Giles applauds (Alessandro Abbonizio/AFP via Getty Images)}

Norton asks KP if he has any regrets. "Yeah clearly we all makes mistakes, none of us are perfect, I certainly made them." KP cites his involvement in the 'Textgate' saga, when he is alleged to have said a few naughty things to the South Africans about his England skipper Andrew Strauss, who was about to play his 100th and final Test. He swats aside Swift's request to find out more about the incident, at which point she says to the glee of the audience: "No, I love learning, you do your chest match..."

Norton then points out perceptively to KP: "How do I put this nicely, from reading the book, that just maybe team sports aren't for you... maybe you'd be a great tennis player."

Swift, who had been to Lord's that morning apparently, doesn't look as if she is warming to KP, who then goes on to end any hope of a reconciliation by admitting that he is not a 'cat person'.

The clip is worth rewatching for the earnest way Swift tries to relate to the problems of the England Test team by looking serious and nodding gravely.

Alas when it comes to the fall-out with Flower and co, KP never did shake it off.