Uppercut
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I don't think cricket's enough of a team game that you could conceivably replace Kevin Pietersen with Jonny Bairstow and improve the side. He's not unprofessional in-game is the thing. If he was acting a dick on the field of play it would be different.However, to do that is to assess the matter on paper, and cricket is obviously not played on paper. For mine, it's possibly to argue that the balance of side depends on his absence. How a team performs is to some extent at least dependent on how all the constituent parts (i.e. the players) link up with each other and interact. It is a team game. As Jono said earlier on in the thread, it isn't KP vs South Africa. If all the players in the team are diametrically opposed to each other and pulling in opposite directions what hope is there of it performing to the best of its ability? Including a player who's basically alienated himself from the rest of the squad, routinely behaved poorly and relentlessly pursued his own agenda at the expense of everyone else doesn't sound like a formula for finding the optimal balance of a side to me.