Dubai: Former England One Day International (ODI) captain Adam Hollioake has said even he has as much of a chance of being recalled ahead of next month’s ICC Cricket World Cup than sacked batsman Kevin Pietersen.

Pietersen was fired early last year following the team’s disastrous Ashes tour of Australia. He then wrote an explosive autobiography accusing teammates of bullying and creating a parody Twitter account that poked fun at him.

England named their 15-man World Cup squad ahead of the January 7 deadline, but could still make changes for the February 14 to March 29 showpiece on account of injuries. Pietersen was in free-scoring form in Australia’s T20 Big Bash League, but Hollioake said he has no chance of a recall.

“I would never have dropped him in the first place,” Hollioake told Gulf News. “But you can’t pick him now. Once that decision has been made and, with the way both parties have behaved since, it’s impossible for him to get back into this side. He should have thought about that before he wrote his book.”

Hollioake implied that both sides were to blame for the fiasco, describing the handling of the fall out as ‘amateur night’.

“To drop someone just because you don’t like them... you don’t have to like the people you play with, there’s this fallacy that everyone has to be best mates. I think what you do if you have such a disruptive influence in your team, you’ve got to manage him.

“Let the other players know [what he’s like]. Say ‘ignore him, let him go and score his runs, let him win the game. You don’t have to go out for drinks with him or live in his pocket, let him score his 100s and tell the media how great he is’.

“Surely that’s what you tell your little kids when they go to school, you can’t tell me international sportsmen aren’t capable of the same? Ignore him and that’s that.

“But, once he’s been dropped, and once he’s come out and written that book about his teammates, how do you expect to share a changing room with those people?”

Hollioake, 43, added of Pietersen: “He didn’t help himself. Should he have been dropped? Absolutely not, he’s a wonderful player, one of the greatest England batsmen ever. This game is all about scoring more runs than your opponent and he does that.

“Would the boys want to socialise with him? Probably not. Should he have written stuff in his book about his teammates, absolutely not.

“So, it’s pretty straight forward. Everyone is having this argument over whether they should pick him or not. But he’s made it almost impossible for himself. I think I’ve got as much chance of being picked than him and I’m old and [not very good].”

Asked if England would be a weaker team without Pietersen at next month’s World Cup, Hollioake replied: “Absolutely, but forget about everything he’s written in his book, he’s previously had the current coach [Peter Moores] sacked [in 2009 following a separate argument], so it’s untenable.

“How are they going to work together? It’s one thing not liking somebody but quite another when you’ve got that bloke the sack and now you’ve got to work together.

“He’s also said things about blokes on his team and the players there now don’t know if he’s going to write another book, so you wouldn’t want to hang around with him.

“The way it’s all been handled has been amateur night. It’s been a bit handbags at dawn. Rather than an international cricket team, it’s the sort of thing you’d expect from the mums in the schoolyard when they pick their kids up from school — it’s been pathetic.”