With friends like Piers Morgan, even Kevin Pietersen isn't his own worst enemy

"Well, that went well!"

I have a feeling England won’t win their cricket match against South Africa at Lords this weekend, and will therefore relinquish their status as the world’s top test team. That’ll be a shame, but not the end of the world. Let’s face it, we’ve already enjoyed quite a bit of sporting success this summer. But if England does lose its No 1 status, I wonder how much that’ll be down to the influence of that truly revolting blister, Piers Morgan.

Of course, we don’t know for certain that England will lose – or that the presence of Kevin Pietersen would have made a difference one way or the other. He was superb in the the second test, true, but he made little contribution in the first, and has spent long periods as a passenger over the past two years, when his form has - to put it mildly - been variable. If England lose this weekend, it’ll be down to the team’s poor performance against Pakistan in the UAE this winter, when Pietersen batted abysmally.

But Pietersen’s ridiculous, arrogant, divisive, selfish, treacherous behaviour over the past few weeks will have played a part. And given Piers Morgan’s ludicrous defence of Pietersen in recent days, you have to wonder what role the CNN  talk show host has played in goading the South African into behaving so stupidly.

Let’s look at the various tweets Morgan has sent in support of his chum:

Has the ECB asked Strauss, Flower, Broad, Swann & Anderson if they've ever sent derogatory texts about Pietersen? If not, why not?

Well, Piers, old boy, if they did send derogatory texts about your hero, I doubt if they sent them to opposition players during the course of a crucial match. I’m sure lots of rude messages about top generals were sent by other members of the High Command during WWII – but I somehow doubt that Churchill would have sent rude remarks about Dowding or Montgomery to, say, Goerring or Hitler. And if I’d been a member of the British High Command who had been raised in Germany and spoke with a heavy German accent, I’d probably have been even more careful about who I shared my opinions with.

Pietersen has been an absolute model of professionalism ON the field, where it matters.

Well, yes, professionalism on the field matters an awful lot, but creating a poisonous atmosphere and undermining your team mates and your captain off the field is hardly a trivial offence – and it certainly isn’t professional.

But the most revealing tweet is this one:

Kevin Pietersen's been a good, loyal friend, to me, and many others. Don't believe all the petty-minded crap being written about him.

There you have a perfect example of the sublime solipsism of the jet-set media celebrity (and, coincidentally, an interesting deployment of the “E.M. Forster defence”): “My mate’s a mate of mine, so he can’t possibly be at fault.”

No, I can’t see any flaw whatsoever with Morgan’s logic.

Strange, isn’t it, that the man who took the great Bradley Wiggins to task for not singing the national anthem after receiving his (latest) gold medal (athletes aren’t meant to sing it, by the way) should be so keen to support a cricketer who has behaved with gross disloyalty to the England team. (In case anyone missed the Morgan exchange re Bradley Wiggins, the tweet read: I was very disappointed @bradwiggins didn’t sing the anthem either. Show some respect to our Monarch please! This from the man who got sacked by the Mirror for undermining our troops by printing crudely faked photos purporting to show British soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners.  A Wiggins’ fan - on behalf of the whole country, one suspects - tweeted back: I was disappointed when you didn’t go to jail for insider trading or phone hacking, but you know, each to his own.

Win or lose, I’m delighted Pietersen has been dropped by England. Today, the oaf finally apologised for sending derogatory texts to opposition players. Had he done so three days ago, as requested, he might – just - have still been in the team. Better this way, really. It’s probably too late for Pietersen to learn how not to behave like a CAUC – but I’m certain that unfriending that arch-CAUC Piers Morgan would be a step in the right direction.