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Now Michael Vaughan has his say over Swann's Pietersen comments

Nothing helps a book sell more than a little controversy and Graeme Swann’s remarks about Kevin Pietersen’s captaincy of the England cricket team will have done no harm in shifting copies of his autobiography, The Breaks Are Off.

After England coach Andy Flower raised the book’s profile by expressing his views on the matter last week, former skipper Michael Vaughan has had his two penn’orth, echoing Flower’s sentiments.

In the book, Swann described Pietersen as “a good player, a really fine batsman, but never the right man to captain England”.

For all Pietersen's talent, Swann added, the controversial star was “not one of those natural leaders.”

Flower‘s view is that it is "not a good idea for current players to be talking about their fellow players."

Now Vaughan has come down on the same side of the argument, criticising the Nottinghamshire off-spinner for speaking out of school.

Speaking to the sportinglife.com website, Vaughan said: "When you make comments on individual players that you've played with, what gain has Graeme Swann got or the team got from him mentioning that?

"Andy Flower won't be happy because he likes to keep a very tight ship. He hates anything getting leaked out and he'll be immensely disappointed with what Swann had to say about KP."

Pietersen did not strike many commentators as exactly made for the role when he was named as Vaughan’s successor as captain in August 2008, although he started his reign with a Test win over South Africa followed by a 4-0 one-day series success against the same opponents.

But his relationship with then coach Peter Moores quickly broke down and he resigned the following January.

In this website’s view, Swann’s comments are hardly outrageous and I have not noticed Pietersen disagreeing with them, at least in public.  Moreover, Flower insists that the relationship between the players -- currently on tour in India together -- has not been affected.

Ironically, assuming the footnote after the Sporting Life story is there for the usual reason, Vaughan made his remarks during an interview to publicise England - Top Of The World, a DVD in which he and current Test captain Andrew Strauss look back at the 2011 Test series against India.

Buy The Breaks are Off - My Autobiography, by Graeme Swann, direct from Amazon.

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